NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

An independent small press poetry review

NHI independent review
CHRISTOPHER HARTER: ABSTRACT STILL LIFE
Pathwise Press
PO Box 178
Erie
PA 16512
USA
ISBN 0 9675226 0 9
$3
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This page last updated: 11th December 2007. 		CHRISTOPHER HARTER: ABSTRACT STILL LIFE

Harter's poetry expresses the fractured nature of modern life through the use of disjointed syntax and the juxtaposition of startling images. His style draws both on the robust colloquialisms of an American independent poetry tradition and the cold cerebralness of modernism as in CHILD MAN: 

	All in which Youth found its way to
	Experience

	We did last from one to thirteen
	That time when playful offerings and
	voicings spoke volumes in playground
	cacophony 
	Found ten years and a day hence
	hung to the wall
	A call to Parisian and New Yorke fellows
	taped alongside the graffiti
	we left with our blood and in our throats
I found HER HUSBAND'S COFFIN chillingly precise in its use of detail to evoke memory and personal history:
	One item for each year, labeled by a white tag
	with place and date.
	Each as representative as a mile maker
	or an X scrawled on a map.
BACKYARD FISH POND juxtaposes two different timeframes, that of the golden fish of the Japanese court 
	trained to swim in a figures-8
	...
	The figure, not
	a number but an infinity
with a more prosaic fish existence
	carp-mouthed and
	hungry behind the lily pad"
the final line was satisfyingly affirmative in its closure: 
	It is good to be a fish again.
ABSTRACT STILL LIFE contains an interesting variety of themes; I'm sure that many readers would find this pamphlet a satisfying buy.

reviewer: L. Kiew.