SWALLOW THE LAKE

by Clarence Major ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 1970

Intensely urban poetry with the resistant, angular surface of tumbled brick. It moves sometimes in stuttering little jumps -- broken phrases that knock together and overlap on key words, as if the poem had been literally smashed -- sometimes in long quasi-sentences whose obscure syntax often makes it hard to deduce a relationship between the beginnings and the ends. This is no great problem so long as the imagery is concrete and the subject openly on display; but Major isn't primarily a poet of images and is sometimes almost secretive about his meanings. He can write ""...It is not / the kind of line I / said... But blacksmoke / from a metal object / moving, there is no / scar on any bitch. / Strange that I take / all the words back, / now. But not the / rose, nor the bush,"" ostensibly simple lines, and still leave us certain of nothing. But read aloud, with patience, the lines have an improvisational, jazz-like quality and offer some tough, sharp observations of city life.

Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION