Review: Derek Salisbury

I just read an Irish Drinking Song to my my old man. Thanks to ye and his Irish heritage he's off to fetch a stout. Oh! Great fun. I liked Meaghan's verse suggestion, but this is your drinking song. Here's mud in yer eye, laddie!

A Farewell: Every life
except
this
one.
I like this end stop. It is effective and stands out from the rest of the text. It shows a technique used in several of the poems that we've read. For example: Mary Jo Bang's poem "The Dog" Bark,
"...Lucky

To Be Alive"
You revisit some themes introduced in Temptation has a Beautiful Face( a.k.a. On a Bus to Port Coquitlam), references to kaleidoscopic colors,"You were nothing but color that day, incandescently, strikingly, unnaturally gorgeous, a brilliant plummage of greens and blues," drugs, "Gently, from the cover of tall shadows, I put the paper in," and "flame" imagery, "all the grace of flame," and sex, of course! The line, "I asked you to shut your eyes and open your mouth," caused flashbacks. There is something romantic and pragmatic about these poems. Simultaneously, they are harsh and ugly, "We were lovers in a cheap motel bed!" and hopeful and lovely, "... and a kiss to last forever and a day longer."