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Thoroughly readable

28/11/2014

So You Returned to Sark
by Chris Davies Curtis

This delightful story is a follow-up to the Author’s trilogy about her life on the Island of Sark, in the Channel Islands, her travels to New Zealand and life as a District Nurse in London – [see earlier review 8/5/2014 below].
This volume continues from where Chris Davies Curtis left off earlier, and as the story flows the reader is transported back to Sark and shares the Author’s highs and lows, as she creates a new life with "the love of her life" after her divorce from her former husband.
Throughout the story you get glimpses of her growing happiness and contentment living on an island rich with community life, and her involvement in the social interaction with the locals.
We get to know the Author as a wife, mother, grandmother to her stepchildren, a Registered Nurse, and organiser of multiple activities that bind these small communities together.
This book of 163 pages is thoroughly readable and I encourage those interested to read the earlier three titles first as this one is a continuation and in some respects binds the previous books together.
I have no doubt we will, in the future, hear more from this Author.

Review by Merilyn Mary

So You Returned to Sark
by Chris Davies Curtis
Publisher: Chris Curtis Books through Amazon CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781500786328
Available: paperback Amazon US, UK, and Europe; Wheelers Book Supplies; through Nielsen's catalogues;
from the author via cedcurtis@gmail.com Author's website: www.chrisdaviescurtisbooks.com
Ebook, Amazon Kindle; Smashwords for most other eReaders

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Well-chosen words and phrases

18/11/2014

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Metaphysical Midnight Cowboy Blues
by Peter Dornauf
Good back cover blurb on a ‘real men’ jacket design for this poetry book. Obviously, Dornauf wants poetry to be another spectator sport, with interested bystanders watching as different forms of play evolve, and cheering on the poet, praising his use of ‘ordinary’ language to celebrate ‘ordinary’ things.
I’ve been to a midnight cowboy supper myself and been entertained by cowboy poets, singers and musicians after a rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming, so I know that real men do write poetry. But what kind is it, or ought it to be?
Certainly, out in that real world we all yearn to conquer, observation is a great skill to acquire – to be alert to what’s around us. It’s also one of the primary skills of the poet, and Dornauf has that in bucket loads, and an extensive vocabulary. All of which makes for engaged reading. Yet sometimes he exhibits it in poems that, for me, fall a little short of the target. (In ‘Adjectives,’ for instance.)
I admire Dornauf’s capacity for well-chosen words and phrases, but I do think a poem has to show a little more evidence of construction to deliver meaning than a list of descriptors, however accurate. And when he brings it all together with a purpose he does strike gold. He has an acute awareness of human idiosyncrasy, and what lies around us and beneath the surface of what we say and do.
Occasionally I found myself wishing for a little more old-fashioned lyricism, yet I did end up thinking the claim he made in that back cover blurb was not unfounded – “You’ll not forget these buggers. Some of them anyway.”
Like ‘Silence’ or ‘Sound Advice’ – great fun, this! – ‘Pond Life’ and ‘In the Beginning’ among others will remain with me. ‘Warbler’ in particular demonstrates how much can be done with not many lines of well-chosen words to create a satisfying portrait.
Dornauf handles long poems well (though I would prefer to call them monologues; they’d make excellent performance pieces) and long poems are presently out of favour. It’s like he can think it all through and keep it in the forefront of his mind until he gets it down on paper. An admirable talent. A poem like ‘Rejection’ is almost stream of consciousness, and yes, it does linger, and yes, metaphysical does describe it.
Is Dornauf worth reading? Will you like him? I don’t know.
I did, sort of. Anyone who can call a poem ‘The Man Who Wanted to be a Cup and Saucer’ has my attention.
And I suspect his poems really come to life when they’re read two or three times, and preferably aloud.
Try it!
PS Doesn’t debutant have an e at the end, and it isn’t lightening that flashes – it’s lightning. Lightening is what you do when you’re mouse-brown and want to be blonde. And why no ISBN on the book?

Review by Jenny Argante

Metaphysical Midnight Cowboy Blues
Author: Peter Dornauf
Publisher: Handmade Press
Available: Print only, from Penny’s, and Poppies bookshops in Hamilton; or from the Author via his website peterdornauf.com

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Thoroughly readable

Well-chosen words and phrases

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