THE BOOK OF LOVE

This volume, the author’s second collection, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Despite the depth and breadth of some of his allusions, Lumsden’s ethos retains an essentially pop attitude: cheeky, funny, and impishly self-deprecating. He doesn’t take himself or the dilemmas of modern relationships too seriously or too theatrically and, as a result, his poems have the snappiness of pop tunes rather than the overproduced pretentiousness of rock operas. Though undoubtedly referring to the Monotones’ single 1958 hit tune of the same name, Lumsden’s offering reads more like The Book of Frustrated Sex, often laboring beneath his “double load of Calvinist and voyeuristic tendencies.” He invites the reader to “join [him] in a little sinning,” but also makes it clear he’d “value some reluctance, a cold-feet shiver.” Like Nick Drake and other contemporary urban British poets, Lumsden verges on bad-boy cuteness, yet he nearly always catches himself before becoming too clever for his own good. His touch is deft, the gist of a poem often sneaking up on the reader. A series of seeming non sequiturs or other silliness accumulates gradually, innocuously at first. At some point the cold truth beneath it all becomes apparent, and the moment of recognition is accompanied by a chill. His intimacies are counterposed against ironies, loneliness, trysts gone awry, awkward ménages à trois, and the piquant, often repellent, odors of lovemaking.

Lumsden reminds us of two poetic virtues that don’t get nearly enough airplay: playfulness and inventiveness. He’s a past master of both.