I like Jeff Guess's writings, a local poet who really knows his way around a phrase, and can capture an image or a feeling brilliantly with a refreshingly short handful of words, not always an easy thing to do.
This is a slim collection of his poetry, and well worth the read if you can find a copy. But I had one problem with so many of the pieces in it - it's the way he chooses to format them.
They read like they're a great opening paragraph to a short story or a piece of microlit - and they are! It's just that he then chops them up into "poetry" format. One pulled out at random below, first re-jigged (by me) into prose, and as it appears in the book. What's your slant on it? Am I just getting old and pedantic??
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Waist high above odd sticks of wheat he stands at the centre of a difficult universe. Rain is a bad dream that clouds old eyes.
Years ago he might have prayed for it to either start or stop - hold off for harvest. Time has ordered the once high-handed psalm of praise into a sad doxology of certainties, that number mice and means, rust and reliance, and all that lets him down. Darned woollen arms folded over and around, wrapping the sparse frame of an old farmer rigged out as if for fancy dress he no longer wants to go to, a scarecrow with little stuffing left - to keep even the birds away.
Waist high above odd sticks of wheat he
stands at the centre of a difficult universe.
Rain is a bad dream that clouds old eyes.
Years ago he might have prayed for it to
either start or stop - hold off for harvest.
Time has ordered the once high-handed
psalm of praise into a sad doxology
of certainties, that number mice and means,
rust and reliance and all that lets him down.
Darned woollen arms folded over and around
wrapping the sparse frame of an old farmer
rigged out as if for fancy dress he no
longer wants to go to. A scarecrow with little
stuffing left - to keep even the birds away.
(C) Jeff Guess 1991
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