Take Five: Poems in 5/4 Time

by Tad Richards

98 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 24, 2012

Reviews

[Arthur Plotnik]

I loved this collection, quick to deliver the goods I seek in poetry, among them surprise, language, irreverence, heart, eye, sensuality, tease, frisson, even big laughs. A prolific author in many genres, Richards here corrals his wild imagination into a self-invented, addictive form of five stanzas of five lines each with syllables ranging from 3 to 6. They read like butter but come off like, say, Gogol, Borges, and Nin riffing on absinthe. Worth admission just to discover Sookie, Richards' perverse, recurring muse who won't let the poet into her "penetralia." (Look it up.) But so much more awaits: a dreamed woman with hands that recall "the soft brush of sunken kelp beds" who later drizzles chocolate over your bound bod; the Byelorussian girl who "trades erotic futures" (sell short!); the vengeful car that "can smell your bones and go through its own windshield to get at you" (the driver). A remembered summer love's scent that "fell all over him." That's this book, in a way, in any season.

[Ian Brent]

Guttural and down to earth poetry, set to a refreshing tempo.