This is another free verse collection I picked up on a whim. I purchased it on a brief flip through. Riley's phrasing is lovely, and I appreciate the format. The book contains numerous sets of poems (or "sett"... a play on streets on the map, no doubt).

Riley has the odd moment here that really leapt off the page and made me fall in love, though rare. For example:

I take the lemonade bottle to the village
and get it filled with red wine (a litre)
improving (no doubt) the status of the object.

Love it. The entire poem is just three more lines, and it is one of the shortest and most solid pieces in the collection.

Write down the couple of pieces that didn't bore me and return the book? It's not a bad collection at all. It isn't my style. His line breaks are effective, I genuinely love his phrasing, and I like the topics as well, but the endless pretty-pretty nature descriptions are just mind-numbing. Not all metaphors are created equal. The descriptions of leaves and sky and etc just felt stale. You can tell just from reading the poems that they are not written by a young, fresh writer. There is nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't suit my preferences for free verse.

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Created Oct 09, 2015 at 1:45pm • Submit your own review...