Poetry Readers Challenge discussion

My last poetry book of 2016 and a very fine, tightly worded collection exploring quirks of history and geography and the human individualities that fuel them.

I bought the collection ( a very fine hardback edition, no less) at the end of November because I had heard Boxall read at a poetry event in Cambridge and was sufficiently impressed to want to own a copy of the poems. This is Boxall's first collection and, given my reaction to this, I shall be looking out for subsequent works.

The poems are measured, precision pieces shining a light on peculiarities of history and place, including, in "Borderline", The Haskell Free Library and Opera House which apparently straddles the US - Canadian border:

"Who knows why they built it here:
some grand Victorian joke. We come in
by one country and leave by another.
Leave fireworks and booze at the door.

Even the name is ambivalent:
The Haskell Free Library and OperaHouse
suggests the aria shushed from the wings,
the book snapped theatrically shut."

Then there is the the ubiquitous UK tradition of "The King's Bed", with every grand mansion and castle in the country seemingly claiming to house a bed that a king once slept in:

"Tradition holds that on a wet starless night
in 1665 the King slept in this bed, or one quite like it."

Other poems explore the fates of some of the mutineers on the Bounty, the man who shot Admiral Nelson and the three men, each named Hugh Williams, who were the sole survivors of three separate shipwrecks in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The poem ,"Everything I Ate At Barton State Fair", is a colourful exploration of the strange and multifarious edible delights of the fair, including the blooming-onion:

"I'd been told about the delicious thick fists

of them, the crisped skin, the sauce pot
balanced in their glib hearts. I was sold
before I ever found on, and here they were,
exploded globes the size of two cupped hands."

Quirky subjects, and a frequently humorous or deceptively light tone, but carefully and thoughtfully written poems in which every word counts and is weighed just so.

I have now added a more detailed review (see above).

I had to google a "blooming-onion" -- what a very interesting-looking thing! Boxall sounds like a very well-read and/or well-traveled person with a keen eye for the peculiar things in life, a la Marianne Moore. And I can sort of see how this quirky kind of poetry might provide a welcome counterbalance after reading a more personal, confessional poetry collection or a more fiery, politically engaged one. Thanks for posting your review.