NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

An independent small press poetry review

NHI independent review
GORDON ANNAND: YOU WRITE YOUR LIFE LIKE FICTION
Pathwise Press
PO Box 178
Erie
PA 16512
USA
ISBN 0 9675226 2 5
$3

email Pathwise Press
visit the website of Pathwise Press

www
NHI review home page
FAQ page
Notes for Publishers

book reviews
anthologies
magazines
other media

Web design by Gerald England
This page last updated: 11th December 2007.
GORDON ANNAND: YOU WRITE YOUR LIFE LIKE FICTION

A new name to me, but a revelation. A collection of some 18 poems with strong clear messages (very like despair) and painstakingly crafted as regards form and layout on the page.

An extract from the poem from which the book takes its name will give a taste:

	Tell me a story

	We are driving the evening
		across the backbone of history
	black mountains of night
		under fog and rain

	Tell me a story

	in a valley
		white light explodes
	freezes the startled pines
		we stutter and blink......
Progenitors, maybe, in Ginsberg and Pound, and none the worse for that, to me this is exactly what poetry is about — acts of the imagination, to use Coleridge's phrase, an invitation into a blend of powerful imagery and thought in which we are drawn into feelings about a both strange and instantly recognisable gestalt, a subject/object relationship which frees our own imagination and helps us to cope. This might well seem excessive, but in reading these poems, I could not help but feel that he hits the nail on the head every time.
	Heaven is Endless

	Heaven is endless and America is endless
		but America isn't Heaven
	God is endless and Washington is endless
		but Washington isn't God
	Jesus finds his end and I find mine,
		but I am not Jesus
			not by a long shot
				from a high window.......
I rest my case.

reviewer: Stanley Trevor.