We could consider that ‘preloved’ is a euphemism for ‘old crap’, but when it’s used as the adjective tautologically introducing an inherent potential for euphemism in ‘metaphors’, we should broaden our expectations. Indeed, as this book’s blurb explains the poems as being ‘an attempt to record, reconfigure and remake the world around us before it disappears for good’, we are escaping the old and new crap of a planet in decline. Like language, memory and truth, nothing can ever be certain, even in trying to remake what we thought might have been.

In the opening, brief list poem ALL THAT MELTS INTO AIR, the recurring caveat is in the  ‘We only’ where the repetition qualifies/quantifies our cheating and subterfuge and complicity in an uncertain existence,

‘We only know what we are told.

We only have ourselves to blame.’

Or put another way, a poem-collage A THEOLOGY OF GHOSTS explores the shifting expressions of what is a shifting reality across any moment in time,

‘How quickly imagination
becomes autobiography,
the supernatural soon
accepted and turned
into daytime TV.

Who keeps check on
the deep end and why?’

In the sands of this shifting, our response is to cope as best we can with the anxiety, starting with an acknowledgement. The poem BROKEN is headed by an Ashbery quote from The Problem of Anxiety, and its middle stanza asks,

‘Some things never make sense,
remain feedback loops of the noise
now. Ought I to know all these
languages Pound thinks I should?’

Anxiety is personal and endemic and comes in all shapes and sizes ‘just as sure as eggs is eggs’ (DEPTH PERCEPTION). Earlier in this poem, the apparent lightness of the cliched line just quoted is prefaced with something deeper,

‘It’s a risky thesis to suggest
that creative spirit comes out
of oppression, but in this case
it did, resisting the decline,
occupying a space that no-one
would otherwise have thought
of.’

This is the balancing act of the poems in this collection – their light and dark, never forgetting

‘It’s easy to underestimate
how comedy and satire remain
enmeshed in the controversy
of our endlessly awkward lives.’ (FOUND AND ENABLED)

That I can construct a review-thesis from what I choose to select – which may or may not be an act of ignoring/avoidance – is also risky but equally dynamic (within the context of being a review!).

PURGE is a beautiful poem about beauty, and is beautifully placed in a collection that may appear to ignore this but actually embraces. Here it is in full,

‘Beauty is not grimaces and fortuitous gestures,
is more essential and serene, prefigures enthusiasm
for the rigours of expeditions on summer nights.

There is no hierarchy of beauty, it must be dissociated
from the dazzle of crystal or the way clouds hang
in the sky above the marble sea. Blue moonlight

and the scent of flowers momentarily persuade us;
the light dips, flickers over the horizon, the sound
of waves fills the wind. These are halcyon days.

Beauty is not grimaces and fortuitous gestures,
is more essential, we need it just to be there.
Soon you will know everything about endings.’

The collection doesn’t end with this, but I have.

Is this a remaking?

You decide. You can get Preloved Metaphors from the superb Red Ceilings Press here: https://www.theredceilingspress.co.uk/product-page/preloved-metaphors-rupert-m-loydell

A final posting from my ‘mathematics’ collection. Perhaps I’ll get the whole out there in the arithmentical future…

Greg Thomas is an academic of concrete (&similar) poetry e.g. his publication Border Blurs: Concrete Poetry in England and Scotland – Liverpool University Press, 2019, and he is also a memorable writer of/in this genre e.g. the text being reviewed, and particulates also with Timglaset, 2022. I am trying to avoid too definitive a labelling of the poetry – though ‘concrete’ is clearly its key feature – but his work is innovative and wide-ranging, as with his other recent work Candle Poems with Poem Atlas, 2023. When I reviewed particulates soon after its release, I referred to the writing as ‘old-school’ concrete and was never reprimanded so I’m playing comfortably, I trust, in the same ball park.

This latest collection is in two sections, threshholds and the skin of the sky: poems in the Faroe Islands. The opening poems in the first section form a brief trio about ‘boundaries’, and in addition to the gentle pulse of their nuances, it is interesting how so many of the poems to follow will subvert this theme by working up to and past the boundaries of their individual pages. And this is emblematic of how the poems enact and search within, outside and beyond the words/language of their roots.

Or put another way, Thomas explores ‘suspended/certainties/between’, this in another poem where its presentation (so not as I have written) is freed from the logic of its statement, this another characteristic of the whole collection – logic and statement being my terms rather than quotes from Thomas’ texts.

And (here’s a thread then) a titled poem six proposals for new words presents a playful selection of that number which are both recognizable and wonderfully new. A named set five broch poems are presentations as varying fortresses – small and larger – of their precise words, and the visual significances are aspects of the concrete poetry tradition.

Text size, fade-outs, page fills: these are further explorations of how Thomas constructs the varieties of meaning and perception conveyed by words and phrases and actual things,

or, as Thomas puts it elsewhere

‘old things/newly disturbed’

In the second section, the poems continue to take on their disturbances and there are threads that appear as well as lyrical interludes and delightful structurings. Here is a delightful poem from the section,

‘the island is a flute

the first tunnel
is for your mouth’

threshholds is a collection I have been enjoying so much for the past few weeks since receiving, dipping in and out, and again today with my deep

dive for this review.

Do you see what I did? Old-school…

You can get threshholds at the excellent Timglaset here: https://www.timglaset.com/produktsida/greg-thomas-threshholds

Was surprised and pleased to receive my copy in the post yesterday – wasn’t aware it was coming. I have a poem sequence in this – with my thanks to Jack Caradoc.

The title of the poem sequence would seem to reflect that unknowing…

An umbrella and sunshine

The penultimate or final posting from my mathematical list poems which I have enjoyed writing. I do have one on trigonometry, but I may wait until I share the whole collection whch did grow beyond my expectations and certainly actual knowing.

Here’s to poetry escaping the shackles of accuracy; embrace the imagined:

In touch with a good friend and fellow writer yesterday, he commented on attending an AI academic’s lecture and not finding it that informative – certainly nothing new to his own areas of interest and experience. My friend was ‘playing with ChatGPT and poetry’ rather than engaging with the generating images/researching coding focus of the lecture, and he also commented on how AI ‘won’t write poetry at all well – it’s all rhyming doggerel’, and this is definitely my own experience with it.

I became interested in ChatGPT a year ago, December the 5^th to be precise, after reading about it in The Guardian and then had my own engagement with it – quite general, with some disturbing aspects, but including the writing of poetry. You can find links to my posts on this here: https://gravyfromthegazebo.blog/?s=ChatGPT&submit=Search

After yesterday’s reminder of the poetic doggerel, I did return to ChatGPT having left it behind some months ago, and explored its rhyming propensity a little more. Nothing has changed in its algorithmic compulsion to rhyme – which is surprising considering the wealth of information and models at its disposal – but I did manage to coax it into a momentary break from that rhyming response. Still limited, but some kind of learning. If I am assed enough to return, I will ask Al (have called it this from day 1) to write a poem without rhyming, and will not be surprised at the familiar rhyming response. Here are yesterday’s exchanges:

Note – the poems appeared in conventional stanzas, accentuating the rhyming, but these get presented as ‘prose’ paragraphs when copying to save.

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Having been uncertain, I did persevere and write a list poem about quadratic equations*, as is now clear! I have also continued with my mathematical focus/compulsion, though after one on trigonometry, I may have now concluded.

I am delighted to have engaged the interest of those who actually know a thing or two about math, and I appreciate likes/repostings of my work from Marian Christie and JoAnne Growney.

My interest in maths and poetry was first properly prompted by Marian Christie when I read and reviewed her book From Fibs to Fractals. Exploring mathematical forms in poetry (read here: https://gravyfromthegazebo.blog/2021/11/11/from-fibs-to-fractals-exploring-mathematical-forms-in-poetry-by-marian-christie-beir-bua-press/ ). JoAnne Growney added a post about my early ‘math’ list poems on her web site Intersections — Poetry with Mathematics (see here: https://poetrywithmathematics.blogspot.com/2023/11/adding-list-poem.html ).

I will post my further arithmetical list poems over the coming days for those who are counting on them…

*I suggested there is a ‘story’ behind me and quadratic equations, and there is which is mentioned in my review of Marian’s book. I think my suggestiveness was a little overstated!