thebookworm777's review against another edition
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
tooshorttoread's review against another edition
4.0
An excellently ordered collection. From the entrancing opening poem ‘And the Soul’, through an exploration of the North and its people into the darkly intriguing poetic sequence ‘How I Abandoned My Body To His Keeping’ Moore displays a talent for language that is not afraid to toe the line with the darkness.
There are poems in this collection which simply sing. The titular poem ‘The Art of Falling’ being just one amongst many that really gripped me. This would have reached 5 stars save for the what I have come to think of as the ‘Brass’ poems. They didn’t seem to reach me as well as the others.
I liked the wolves that kept realising odd mournful howls here and there – often at the end of a poem, often unexpected. At first they seemed a little peculiar – like an image that should have been cropped out when the rest of its imagery disappeared in an earlier draft. Yet as the collection gathered pace they started to make sense, to be something that I searched for.
I read this collection through in one go = something I rarely choose to do with poetry. It felt like a fast read, perhaps propelled along by the shape of the poems and their irregular punctuation. I’ll definitely return to it to analyse and enjoy it further but even from that first read through some phrases have already stuck with me: ‘two ghosts disintegrating on the lens’, ‘thoughts that took over the day like weather’ and ‘I knew you, then I didn’t, then I stopped.’
There are poems in this collection which simply sing. The titular poem ‘The Art of Falling’ being just one amongst many that really gripped me. This would have reached 5 stars save for the what I have come to think of as the ‘Brass’ poems. They didn’t seem to reach me as well as the others.
I liked the wolves that kept realising odd mournful howls here and there – often at the end of a poem, often unexpected. At first they seemed a little peculiar – like an image that should have been cropped out when the rest of its imagery disappeared in an earlier draft. Yet as the collection gathered pace they started to make sense, to be something that I searched for.
I read this collection through in one go = something I rarely choose to do with poetry. It felt like a fast read, perhaps propelled along by the shape of the poems and their irregular punctuation. I’ll definitely return to it to analyse and enjoy it further but even from that first read through some phrases have already stuck with me: ‘two ghosts disintegrating on the lens’, ‘thoughts that took over the day like weather’ and ‘I knew you, then I didn’t, then I stopped.’
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