Nice cover. But I usually think of poetry as a way of communicating something. It’s not supposed to be utilitarian, really. It can be indirect and cryptic and obscure and all that, it’s okay. What it’s trying to communicate can be complex or difficult or elusive, too; no problem. Just as long as communication winds up happening in the end, I’m happy. In these poems, at least for me, it doesn’t. Reading them felt like listening to an in-joke that I’d been left out of, or working on a word-jumble puzzle where the letters don’t spell anything. Maybe the author is trying to provoke frustration and dissatisfaction in the reader; it wouldn’t be entirely out of place, given that the poems appear to be about prefaces, vestibules, antechambers, preliminary afterthoughts, things that start out but never really go anywhere. But even if the effect is intentional, it’s not to my taste. (Wendy Banks)
poetry chapbook, 28 pgs, Stephen Collis, $5, Low Fi Press Publishing, Burnaby, BC