So here’s the thing: I actually got hold of a copy of Shiver , Alan Buckley ’s debut pamphlet of poems, not so long after it deservedly grabbed the PBS Pamphlet Choice back in 2009. They say a week’s a short time in politics, and the same can go for poetry: so much stuff is published these days, half the time you can barely keep up, and that’s just with the kind of thing you enjoy, never mind the whole broad canvas. (Or at least I can’t anyway, and sincerely hope / suspect I’m not the only one). Marketing exacerbates this, of course: sure some of the best poetry comes from those imprints that are part of a much bigger commercial enterprise, but in the media fuss that can sometimes surround the big players’ literary stars (relatively speaking, like; this is poetry after all), you can often end up missing out on something very special put out by the smaller indies. As an occasional reviewer, this can be doubly frustrating: by the time you find out about / get around to properly rea
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