Familiar

This poem leaps off the page into the mind.  It begs to be read aloud.  It is technically very adroit, but poems do not hold their readers by mechanical virtuosity.  They need a strong ballast of meaning, and none could be more haunting than the doppelganger, whose ancestor the nineteenth century poet Heinrich Heine met in an empty moonlit street.

But this poem is its own place, and confidently of its own time.  Its wit absorbs the jargon of computers and insurance salesmen: "flexible security plan".  Its energy dazzles: "verbs, verbs, verbs."  One of its strengths is rhyme, but rhyme which surprises, switching from full to half, bouncing in mid-line, finally, shifting its place for the poem's quieter, more thoughtful end.

 This is a surefooted poem, constantly ahead of its readers, skirting the darknesses of its subject with pleasure and accomplished skill.

.

Alison Brackenbury