Loads of Learned Lumber

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Mathias Svalina, _The Explosions_

IT'S NO SECRET that LLL has long had a hopeless crush on the poetry of Mathias Svalina--surreptitiously leaving flowers on its doorstep, regularly peeking into Yes, Starlings! Yes!, asking the other blogs if they know who Mathias Svalina's poetry really likes. With the publication of The Explosions, that crush has deepened and matured into the Real Thing...

...well, we've carried that conceit far enough, I think! All I really wanted to do is mention that I will be reviewing The Explosions in a different and altogether more respectable online forum and thus have pre-empted myself from writing much about it here.  So I will content myself with saying that I think Svalina's poetry is just getting stronger and stronger, and you all ought to pick up The Explosions. The short poems are excellent in the usual Svalinian ways, but the long poem "Above the Fold" (a section of which, "The Viral Lease," has already appeared in a chapbook and was discussed in LLL a while back) attempts something new and difficult, and pulls it off.

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