NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

There are some carefully composed, mostly rhyming, pieces in this worthy homage to Wordsworth (and others). The rhyming poems are technically the more accomplished efforts (in the main) — unfortunate then that they are littered with inversions and other archaic devices in order to maintain their rhyme schemes. Although written, I imagine, with the very best intentions to please, a reader is often presented with lines that may be described as original only in their numbing banality:

	The sea comes in, the sea goes out

	'Degraded mass of animated dust',
	deflowered at your beauty's peak, no less;
	for I espied bold blackspot and smooth rust:
	my ordered garden's creased and crumpled mess.

Each poet featured in this anthology appears a genuine lover of Wordsworth, and for that each must be commended; of one thing, though, I'm certain, if Wordsworth were writing today he would not be mimicking his earlier self.