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Des Lewis - GESTALT REAL-TIME BOOK REVIEWS
A FEARLESS FAITH IN FICTION — THE PASSION OF THE READING MOMENT CRYSTALLISED — Empirical literary critiques from 2008 as based on purchased books.
2021
THIS MUST BE EARTH by Melissa Wan
COCKY WATCHMAN by Ailsa Cox
My previous reviews of NIGHTJAR PRESS: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/tag/nightjar-press/
When I read these works, my thoughts will appear in the comment stream below…
Darkness Visible 2017
A book by Roger Keen
When I read this, I anticipate conducting a real-time review in the comment stream below…
Early youthful poems (1976-1984) of Tamar Yellin first published in 2020.
My previous reviews of this author: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/tamar-yellin/
When I continue to read this book in due course, I hope to give some thoughts upon it in the comment stream below…
THIS IS PART TWO OF MY REVIEW AS CONTINUED FROM HERE: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2021/03/25/poems-tamar-yellin/
November 11th 1977
“The leaves are gathering at the door”
This feels like an uncanny presage of a house now disguised as the poet’s memory of a housedog’s instinct or the then present truth, an initial germ of HOUSE OF LEAVES (2000), then other ‘strange house’ works…echoing those more traditional houses of yore.
Become strange, that is, in hindsight of what we have all read since? Including this poem fatefully read today when I have been thinking of such things.
Song
November 18th 1977
A cosiness by firelight, and a million reflections of the moon through a gap in the curtain.
Old fashioned with sung legends, if not, I guess, with right-angular cosines in the patterns of dew!
My previous reviews of Terry Grimwood: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/tag/terry-grimwood/ and https://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2010/09/25/the-places-between-by-terry-grimwood/
and of EibonVale: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/eibonvale-press/
When I read this publication, my thoughts will appear in the comment stream below…
BEAUTIFUL ARE THE FEET
“…and it is coming, you will be isolated, incommunicado, non-communicational. Lonely. No one will be able to talk to you. Not even your own family.”
Good! I am that grizzled old smelly curmudgeon imagined by this short work first published in 2015! I relish the time given for reviewing books without interruption from my outdated communication system, even with barely enough WiFi to get such reviews out to you! And, oh yes, that rainy day I always predicted against the grain of optimism has arrived with a vengeance and I enjoy living off my hoarded savings instead of leaving them to others! I told you so!
“And did those feet…” William Blake
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THIS MUST BE EARTH by Melissa Wan
“, a woman too big and somehow too dark to be Grace, who had always been pale and slight.”
A wan Moon, ironically, for the Grace of God, has slipped its tether and become a pencil sharpener or a drawing of a UFO or something or someone else altogether? This is a compelling, if discomfiting, piece wherein off-duty taxi driver George picks his daughter up at the train station for Christmas when more than just the Bethlehem Star has vanished from our dark horizons…
The out-of-kilter sense of this work as we progress with more and more knowledge of George’s backstory, a watchman in a vigil thus to protect the night sky, in a long line of such watchmen on the spear side of his family if not the distaff, and actually he was born on a notable space exploration date in 1959, and we are also granted inside knowledge revealed for us about his own habits and secret salacious thoughts, and his sneakiness in not being observed by his wife (and I use the word ‘observe’ advisedly), and a gradual inexplicable entropy of expectations in his self worth seems to pan out. This work even causes an accretive lack of confidence by the reader in their own sanctity of self, I sensed, especially in the ability to clinch a bargain with this story and how it does actually end and why — indeed, why do major things go missing or are misunderstood and not recognised, and, just as one example, why was it George chose Mark Murphy and not Herbie Mann when planning the music to play in his unflagged taxi for when his daughter from university got into it after his meeting her train, while, perhaps significantly, thus off-duty….
Our co-vivid dream for today?
“Most people seemed only too keen to herald the end of the world.”
My previous review of this author: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2019/07/17/best-british-short-stories-2019/#comment-16525
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“Cajun moon
Where does your power lie
As you move
Across the southern sky
You took my babe
Way too soon
What have you done
Cajun moon”
Herbie Mann music