Monday, March 27, 2023

Professor Hassler reviews Michael Butterworth Complete Poems: 1963-2020

My International Authors colleague Mack Hassler has posted an intriguing review of Michael Butterworth's new collection.  This passage (among many others) fired my imagination:

Nature seems more designed for police surveillance, for predation, for being eaten up than not—like my old friend Erasmus Darwin, who stays far from London in the Midlands in the Pennines and away from the famous Sam Johnson.  I think it is that distancing by Butterworth that this carefully constructed book maps for us,  I had known the map was there from his smaller pieces in Carter Kaplan’s Emanations and from the literary history of Moorcock and the New Wave.  Butterworth, also, has advised us [International Authors] often on independent publishing for Kaplan’s projects because Butterworth seems most interested in making something new in the world  This is what publishing is and what the risks are.  So the book has a huge autobiographical interest and structure as well as some nicely effective individual poems on what is at risk.  The whole is an open embrace of the flowing risk of time.
Please click HERE to read the full review.  Clicking the cover image will bring the reader to the book's Amazon sales page.

 

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