SCOOP OUT THIS REVIEW!

Scoop Review of Books' review of Mark Young's PELICAN DREAMING: Poems 1959-2008 starts out promisingly (though I say that mostly because, for some reason, it made me snort out a laugh):

Mark Young is an enigmatic figure in the history of New Zealand literature.

I like enigmatic peeps -- they usually make Moi grin. Anyway, click HERE FOR THE ENTIRE REVIEW by Scott Hamilton; here's an excerpt:

                  Whether he is wandering over Grafton Bridge or lying down in a seedy flat, Young perceives the microcosmos around him in a manner that is both sensuous and objective. Despite his eye for detail, he is never short-sighted: he can appreciate the connections between the little world around him and the rest of the universe. A poem called ‘The Distances’ shows Young’s ability to balance the familiar and the faraway:

                                    I am a believer

in the miracle of shortwave. Quito,

Ecuador or Radio Peking. The NHK

or the VOA. Pop or propaganda –

you have your choice amongst the

electronic music of the night ether.

Caught in its web, I am a Columbus

searching for new countries, turning

the dial slowly, hoping to hear

station identification through the static

& distortion.

                                    This is 1 a.m. Auckland;

a time of dead houses, where only

the streetlamps perforate the darkness.

But in Australia it is

11 p.m. E.S.T., & in Cairo

it is eight hours earlier. To turn

the dial is to turn back the clock.

1 a.m. Auckland. The night is just beginning.

                  With their peculiar combination of super-localism and internationalism, poems like ‘The Distances’ sidestep the terms of the long-winded debates about nationalism and regionalism...

Why not acquire a copy for yourself through HERE?! You won't be sorry! Or, if you will be sorry, it'll be for the right reasons!