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Poetry Without Punctuation by Marco Buschini

Poetry Without Punctuation

by Marco Buschini

Pub Date: June 19th, 2006
ISBN: 978-1425927851
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK

A collection of colloquial, rapid-fire free verse from British poet and artist Buschini.

The author dates all of the poems in this debut volume, inviting readers into his intellectual and emotional world in a way that’s almost autobiographical. (Every word was written between Oct. 5, 2005, and Feb. 14, 2006.) The collection’s mood ranges from melancholy and introspective to irreverent, bitter and crass. Buschini’s style is unencumbered and breezy, with the occasional percussive beat, and he favors short lines and partial rhymes, which suit his observational approach. His poems occasionally relate directly to the world around him; “Back to the Beginning,” “A Strange Colour of Blue” and “This Electric City” describe a daily commute, a walk on a bridge and urban bustle, respectively. Many poems are critiques, as in “Like a Dove with Boxing Gloves,” “Sticky but Pretty” and “Bloody Tories,” which rail, not very effectively, against ignorance, indifference and conservative politics. “The Other Side of the Coin” is most persuasive, with its indictment of the shortsightedness that comes with wealth and power. More often, however, Buschini is concerned with inner landscapes. At his most concrete, he offers “Digging Holes,”[30] built on the single metaphor of searching for the full presence of one’s consciousness in the grit of everyday places. On the abstract side, there’s “Inside the Triangle,” a nearly indecipherable jumble of mathematic and scientific references, and “Own Rights” which begins and ends with the declaration: “I’m an individual and not a country.” The poems linger on ideas of freedom, pushing boundaries, an ill-defined notion of pleasure and the search for creative fulfillment. Verses such as “The Sound of Love Colossal” and “The Weight of Gold” offer hopeful, but vague, reveries regarding life’s mystery and potential. The poems’ compositions appear to have been rapid—nine were written in one day—and, as a result, they’re riddled with grammatical errors. Overall, this fired-off approach permits levity and experimentation but offers uneven results.

Lively, intimate verse that might have been more effective with more oversight and revision.