Disinformation

by Frances Leviston

Frances Leviston's first collection, Public Dream , was one of the most acclaimed debuts of recent years, and praised for combining 'technical mastery with a lucidity that verges on the hypnotic' ( Independent ).
Leviston's keenly-anticipated second book sees both an intellectual and dramatic intensification of her project. We often credit poetry as a kind of truth-telling, but it can also be an agent and a vessel of in the course of making its proofs and confessions, it also seeks to persuade and seduce by any means it can. Leviston uses both sides of poetry's tongue to address one of the key questions of the how have we come to know what we think we know? In the title poem, a woman preparing for a child's birthday party suddenly glimpses the invisible screen of false data behind which she lives - and her own complicity in its power. Many of these poems are concerned with ruined or abandoned structures, dismembered and disappearing bodies, constructed and deconstructed identities; behind them lie the false gods who manipulate the streams of information with which we must navigate the contemporary world. In Leviston's inimitably vivid and vital language, Disinformation challenges us to rescue our idea of identity from that mass of glib truth and persistent falsehood - and proposes how we might begin to think of poetry itself as a means to that end.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 12, 2015

Reviews

[Emily B · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this a little more than the last collections of Frances Leviston that I read.
However overall I think this style of poetry isn’t really my cup of tea

[Viv JM · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't read a huge amount of poetry and I'm not sure how to go about reviewing this.

I will say that I did enjoy it, especially the mythology-themed poems. I was trying to think of an adjective to describe Leviston's wonderful use of language and imagery and I think the word that sums it up best for me would be "arresting".

[Juliano · Rating 3 out of 5]

“In the golden age, / whatever was offered, you would say yes.” Disinformation, Frances Leviston’s second collection of poetry, is as much a departure from her debut collection Public Dream as it is a continuation. Leviston is still preoccupied with the structures which comprise our worlds, how we interact with them; in her work we are made aware of the structures and bodies, but also of inevitable duplicity, of costs: “The future creates these fabulous blueprints / from cities it pulls to the ground.” Whereas Public Dream was so vivid and grounded in visual narrative, the poems in Disinformation are more cerebral, abstract — not just in terms of interiority, but reference + style, a form that’s much more challenging and ambitious than her earlier work. Truth and meaning — or at least their vague shadows — proliferate these poems, along with questions of the body and the being inhabiting it, and all the gods behind the murky scenes. Not necessarily an all-encompassing answer, her poetry at least offers a sense that clarity — an escape from deception — is viable, even if only briefly, in the written word, the strange contours and vibrant language of the poem in Leviston’s able hands: “it glorifies // more than ever / the sanctuaries waiting / beyond, behind these colonnades’ / unprotected sides.”

[Angelin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leviston’s poetry reads like someone boasting about their knowledge to you. For me, it doesn’t carry the easy flow and beauty a poem usually does. It is boastful and doesn’t care if you care about them (the poems) at all. They are detached, even when Leviston uses the pronoun, I, making it difficult to connect to the poems; something that I look for when reading poetry.

The poems are not inherently bad, makes for good study of imagery and meanings. But just not something that I enjoy. They carry similar themes throughout the collection, of gods and nature-derived meanings.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second collection by poet Frances Leviston. Like Public Dream , there's a satisfying attention to detail and a grounded, contemporary feel. Some of the poems, mainly the ekphrastic pieces, or at least the ones with classical references, are a little less interesting. I think this is at least partly down to the fact that the poems centred on the moments of the now and every day are handled so well.

[scarlettraces · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd rather read a book written by the person who wrote the publisher summary for this book than these poems. I just didn't connect with a thing. I wanted to read what was described but that wasn't what I found.

Poetry is pretty subjective; your mileage will vary.