C K Stead, This Side of Silence – review
The pleasures of This Side of Silence are largely opposite to those of Earth House. With some twenty-five volumes of poetry behind him, the nonagenarian C K Stead expends considerable skill in the effort not to sound poetic while giving his words maximum sharpness and punch. Poem after poem achieves remarkable success in this way. For example, ‘Ode to Autumn’ brilliantly compresses a shimmering of dry wit, vivid metaphorical description and complex emotion into a piece of apparently casual, almost slangy speech. It begins
This day’s officially the first of autumn
but it seems not to know.
The sun’s all … Continue Reading