Ooo I've had great trouble getting into my Blog this morning. Phew, deep breath and relax and hope what I wanted to say is still there behind the frustration!
Once in a while a poetry collection comes along where you return again and again to certain poems or you discover a new writer who's work you really enjoy reading. Unfortunately I can't say that about the collection I am reading at the moment. I am struggling. No disrespect to the poet because she obviously knows her subject but it all goes way over my head.
Ephemeris by Dorothy Lehane (Nine Arches Press) is technical. Her background is in science and I guess it would inevitable that she would write about these subjects. If I had read the page from the link highlighted I probably would not have bought this collection. But I was drawn to buy a copy because having learned a little about planets in the days when I drew up astrological birth charts and knew what an Ephemeris was, I thought I'd enjoy this collection. But I knew early on that this was too scientific (math and science are a whole new language I don't get!) so I have been unable to appreciate her poetry. I'm still plugging away (I've read about half) but it's like reading a text manual when you have no idea which wire goes where!
I guess we all make mistakes in our purchases. I was disappointed though and it did get me thinking about how popular this type of writing is. How well would it sell? My own view is that this would only appeal to those who understood space and galaxies and the cosmos as a whole in all its technical ways. This is not mainstream poetry but experimental. It does actually say that on the back cover! I just wonder how a poet gets this stuff into print when the subject matter is only going to appeal to a few. Maybe I'm wrong - do tell me if I am missing something here because this interests me.
I do have more to say on experimental poetry but time now has slipped away. I will return to this subject next time.
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