on melody dispatch

by Corrine Fitzpatrick

Genres: Poetry

Chapbook

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fitzpatrick's sure feel for internal rhyme, assonance, and sharp alliterative thrusts that turn the readers’ ear to relatively short but dense verbal units (“no honor in that Bosporus;” “the factions monastic;” “sour as a rhetor;” “make muscle in that brittle dress”) had me thinking at first of hip-hop, but may be closer in intention to that other popular (and political) form, the ballad. Many of the poems read like incisive responses to the war in Iraq and the sinister economic matrix that feeds it; at the same time, the the writing displays a close-knit, tightly embroidered formal panache that reminded me of the work a boxer does up close in a clinch with opponents. Melody undefeated.