Photo poems and bathroom abstractions: in The Book of Falling, David McCooey offers a series of psychological snapshots

On a recent award-judging panel, I found myself once again in a conversation about what makes a book of poems “cohesive” – that is, what makes it a book-length experience, as distinct from a single-poem dip, a chapbook dive or, indeed, the narrative journey of a novel.

The panel’s consensus was that it is not necessarily theme that holds a collection between two covers. It can be structural features, such as symmetries or contrasts. It can be a dramatic terrain of action and voice. Or it might be an experiment in technique and form that creates a conceptual sandwich.

In…

© La Conversation - mercredi 3 mai 2023