Remnants (2014)

Jack Ross, ed.: Poetry NZ Yearbook 1 [Issue #49] (October 2014)

Books and Magazines in brief:

Leonard Lambert. Remnants: Poems. ISBN 978-1-927242-28-5. Wellington: Steele Roberts Aotearoa, 2013.

Leonard Lambert: Remnants: Poems (2013)

Here is the news …
Today my brother sold his business, his life,
my lady’s tumour was found benign,
and I confronted the demon nicotine.
And nothing will ever be the same again [“Mystery Channel,” p.36]

I think this quote gives something of the flavour of this new set of poems by Leonard Lambert: “Never quite as simple as they seem,” as the blurb puts it. He’s certainly a poet who – in W. H. Auden’s words – resists “the temptations / to skyline operations.” The subjects on offer here include J.D. Salinger, the Gold Gate Bridge, Napier, the 1950s: a series of snapshots from a still not-too-distant past. The language is direct and yet not unselfconscious, the thoughts more interesting for not being embellished and written up to impress. All in all, I can imagine this book outlasting a good many of its more flashy neighbours.
 

(26-27/9/14)

Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 1 [Issue #49]. ISSN 0114-5770 (2014): 232.

[156 wds]


Poetry NZ Yearbook 1 (2014)


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