Poem to FireFast transparency that explodes the fuel and airin the cylinder and shuts the intake valves and thrustsdown on the piston so the crankshaft spins an... » 

Poem to FireFast transparency that explodes the fuel and airin the cylinder and shuts the intake valves and thrustsdown on the piston so the crankshaft spins and spinsyou cut through all material that blocks your wayso fast that driving now past rushes and billboardsthis pull to her could be your own impersonal presencecloaked in the day to day of the malls and condosall those wired sensors keeping on guard for youexcept you flicker even inside the wet wallwhere papillary muscle makes that sweet pulsationin whatever room shes moving through this momentunder the cotton and the cool smoothness tinted blueIn this debut collection Peter Campion explores both the gaps and theconnections between the self and others. Like the night blooming jasmineleaving its warm trace these poems arise out of the dark. A man awakens in ahotel room to find the neighboring voices merging with the anguished souls ofhis nightmare. A woman living alone beside the ocean hears the words of thedead echo in the crashing waves. But if these poems convey a feeling of anenduring emptiness they also offer us the most vital intimacies. In one poemtwo lovers traverse the industrial sweep of strip malls and office towers toarrive at their rendezvous. In another the seemingly simple memory of a motherplaying with her sons at a park bridges a chasm of pain and loss.With great poise keen insight and formal skill Campion moves between sharedexperience and interior life in the shifting textures of Other People. Whetherwriting in rhymed couplets or free verse he matches a deep understanding ofthe poetic tradition with his own imaginative feelfor structure.The other people of the title of this extraordinary book are fully alive inthe life of its language and so is the poet observing them and observinghimself as one of them. The book is a sympathetic and unsentimental instrumentof truth.David Fer «