Helena Nelson has just sent me a couple of interesting-looking pamphlets to review for Sphinx.
She also enclosed a set of reviewing guidelines, indicating some of the cliches and awkwardnesses to be avoided by reviewers – ‘edgy’, ‘promising’, ‘epiphanies’, vague comparisons with other poets, specialist technical terms like parataxis, and so on. With these strictures in mind, I have sent her the following review:
‛Epiphanies’ is by Linda Beige
(Her début, eagerly awaited).
This new voice, full of edgy rage,
Is spiritual, yet understated.
Her parataxes (bold yet free)
Make her a Geoffrey Hill with bells on.
She promises one day to be
A brainier Helena Nelson.
Both Larkinesque and Eliotic,
Yet subtly sui generis
With her command of street-demotic,
Miss Beige is one to watch. Don’t miss!
Update:
You can read Helena’s complete list of reviewers’ clichés here: http://www.happenstancepress.com/index.php?option=com_easyblog&view=entry&id=155&Itemid=52
Also – see Tim Love on the language of reviews, at: http://litrefsarticles.blogspot.com/2009/02/language-of-reviews.html
