Anne Blonstein: Worked on Screen (Poetry Salzburg, Salzburg, 2005. isbn 3-901993-18-5. 128pp, pb, £8.95/€13.00/ $14.95 — add £1.00/€1.50/$1.50 for p&p. Obtainable from the press at University of Salzburg, Dept. of English & American Studies, Akademiestraase 24, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria).

One for the international database: British poet resident in Switzerland publishes English-language book in Austria. Anne Blonstein's first collection was published by Salt a year or two ago and was welcomed in these pages. Innovative, sort of post-avant to employ a US term, this work is however also informed by Europe and by other languages & literatures (French and German, as one would expect in Switzerland), which pushes it into a rather different orbit. Visual art figures here too, the series of poems being based on works by Paul Klee, as does Judaic lore. The language is heavily-wrought, the poems often terse and elliptical (much as the works by Klee would have been, I suspect) but sometimes producing scattergun effects that sound more like rage: Vaginal emptiedness / receptorfreed labyrinths / eventually nowhered / echogenously reflexing // Gasplilies / acheroses / rawberries / teartrees / ergoniums / nevergreens. It's tempting to see echoes of German grammar in those compounds. All in all, a very interesting volume and one which builds on the author's earlier volume. Some of her work will appear in Shearsman 67/68 in 2006.

Ronald Johnson: radi os (Flood Editions, Chicago, 2005. isbn 0-9746902-4-4; 107pp, pb, $14.95).

A republication of the late Ronald Johnson's 1977 edited Milton. That is to say, this is the first 4 books of Paradise Lost, retaining only certain words, whereby a new narrative is extracted. The concept isn't new, but I'm not certain that anyone else has carried this through to quite such an extent. I'm also not certain that I much like the results: Johnson has been something of a blind spot for me, I freely confess, although I have long admired his early Book of the Green Man. Radi os does exert a weird kind of fascination, not to mention thoughts of what one could do to other classic works with blue ink, but ultimately I remain unconvinced. As usual with Flood, the production is superb.

Pablo Neruda: Fully Empowered (translated by Alastair Reid; Souvenir Press, London, 2005. isbn 0-285-63725-8. 135pp, pb, £12.99)

This is a bilingual edition of Neruda’s 1962 volume Plenos poderes — not, I think, one of the author’s finest volumes, but a solid enough late collection — and it's very useful to be able to read Neruda's collections as they were originally published, rather than in arbitrary selections. Reid's translations are amongst the best we have of Neruda and the Anglophone reader need have no fear of his guide here. Not an essential volume, then, but a useful one.

Yang Lian: Concentric Circles (trans. Brian Holton & Agnes H-C Chang; Bloodaxe Books, Tarset, Northumberland, 2005. 111pp, pb, £8.95).

This is a complex long poem by Yang, an expatriate Chinese poet who has lived in exile in the UK for some ten years now. It's his second long-poem to appear in English, following the fascinating (if somewhat opaque, for the non-Chinese reader) Yi, published by Green Integer of Los Angeles some four years ago. This is a big poem in more ways than one, and is described as a mosaic rather than as a sequence: the title implies concepts spinning around a centre rather than any kind of linear progression and so it proves.

In fact this reminds me of my early days living in the Far East when I was given a lecture on the differences between western and Chinese views of the self vs the rest of the world: some behaviourists had asked groups of Americans and groups of Chinese to draw diagrams reflecting how they saw themselves in the world. The Americans tend to represent themselves at a point on straight line, thus progressing from beginning to end, whereas the Chinese would draw a circle with a dot in the middle representing the self — the rest of the world revolving around it. I may well be oversimplifying the analysis here, but you get the point. Old Chinese maps of the Middle Kingdom (around which therefore all revolves) show the capital in the centre and circles emanating outwards, each containing more remote and barbaric peoples. Yang Lian's fascinating introduction to this book mentions The Cantos, and suggests that the trajectory of that great failed enterprise was only complete when it was translated into Chinese: a synchronic language in which tenses as such do not exist. The eternal present of the poem thus becomes the world, its past, present and future all flowing together, with no real division. It's a seductive analysis, and also suggests what kind of problem the translators have had to face here in getting Yang's poem into English. It does read wonderfully well, but, having been lucky enough to hear Yang Lian read from this earlier this year, and having heard the astonishing sound patterns that he creates in Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese), it has to be said that there is an inevitable compromise in the translation. On the other hand, all translations lose sound to a greater or lesser degree, and I find the results here more than acceptable on a poetic level. It's frustrating, though, when you know what you're missing. The results in English are like very little contemporary English-language poetry, for which I am grateful: it suggests that the translators have managed to open that stubborn window of perception which all too often remains firmly shut.

In short, this is a difficult book in many ways. Some of its complexities will remain far beyond my own perceptions for as long as I read it, but others will be revealed over time, and this is a book that needs time and attention. It's a book that's worth it.

Chicago Review Vol 51, No. 1/2 (Spring, 2005 issue, ed. Eirik Steinhoff, 5801 South Kenwood Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. 312pp, pb, $10. Subscriptions $18 (USA) for three issues; £22.61 airmail to the UK.)

This issue has a special Christopher Middleton section some 140-odd pages long, edited by Bill Martin, and makes a thoroughly splendid volume. Ok, I'm biased in so far as I believe Middleton to be one of the living greats, but not too many agree with me — we are a small but vociferous bunch. It's good to see some US supporters coming up with an excellent festschrift here that is informative and full of good writing. Coming after the superb Dorn and Zukofsky special issues, this one really does confirm CR's reputation as one of the best literary journals around. The magazine represents enormously good value too and is one of those that all right-thinking literati should have on their shelves.

damn the caesars 2 (ed. Richard Owens, 810 Richmond Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14222-1167, U S A. 68pp, centre-stapled, $5). See also the editor's blog.

Second issue of a promising new mag from an energetic young poet-editor. Interesting mix of people in this one, some familiar from Shearsman past and present: Guy Birchard, Janet Sutherland, M.T.C. Cronin, Robert Saxton, John Phillips, plus Kent Johnson, Clayton Eshleman, Amiri Baraka and others. It's good to see new mags coming along like this, staking out some territory for a new generation. We need more mags with young editors trying to do their own thing, and I like the way this one is developing.

The Dark Horse 17 (Summer 2005 issue, ISSN 1357-6720; ed. Gerry Cambridge, c/o 3(b) Blantyre Mill Road, Bothwell, South Lanarkshire G71 8DD, Scotland. 96pp, pb, £3/$5. Subs $£11/$18 for one year (2 issues).

A somewhat-delayed issue, but Dark Horse continues to do what it does best: it's a serious magazine of a somewhat conservative bent and with an interest in formal poetics. The reviews are unfailingly interesting and almost always well-written, which is unusual these days. I find the poems less interesting, which is inevitable, I suppose, given the very different tracks that this magazine and Dark Horse follow, but I have to salute the seriousness and the quality of the journal. Would that there were more like it, regardless of literary-political stance.

Heat 9 (New Series) (ed. Ivor Indyk, PO Box 752, Artarmon NSW 1570, Australia or c/o College of Arts, Education and Social Sciences, University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith South DC, NSW 1797, Australia; 288pp, pb. 1-year subscription A$44 in Australia/NZ, A$55 elsewhere; 2 years: A$80 / A$100).

Heat is a handsome journal that appears twice a year. While it carries poetry, it's more of a literary journal than poetry magazine, carrying essays, prose fiction, verse, reviews and artwork. This one offers an excellent mix of poetry, fiction, artwork and essays, and is the very model of what such magazines should be. Fine design too.

The Poker 5 (ed. Daniel Bouchard, P.O. Box 390408, Cambridge, MA 02139, U.S.A. 92pp, $10. 2-issue subscription $18/3 issues $24. Payments in favour of Daniel Bouchard.)

The Poker's first five issues show a strong editorial hand, a deft staking-out of territory, and almost a declaration that the world should sit up and pay attention because the new generation's here. There are a lot of excellent young writers in each issue of this magazine, the majority of whom were new to me. It's this fact that makes the magazine particularly exciting; that, and the vigorous debate in its pages, occasioned by impassioned commentators such as Steve Evans, Kent Johnson and Nathaniel Tarn. Basically this is the best new magazine I've seen in many years, and I'd recommend keeping track of it, just to see where it takes you.

copyright © Tony Frazer, 2005. All quotations are copyright © by the authors.