Oubliette
The deliberately wary lines of Peter Richards's Oubliette his first book, and another from Verse magazine's first season as a book publisher limn a beleaguered self in a crowded world, one resistant to postmodern skepticism but uncertain of its own makeup: "I am not broken as they envision, am not partial," the first poem declares, yet "I fear there is no... place to be inside of." Richards's slippery, fractional meditations recall by turns Charles Simic, Mark Levine and Mark Strand; he explores the domestic and the exceptional, the narcissistic and the ecological: "Waters are tepid, careful and I walk on the waters." It can be hard to separate Richards's work (featured in several quality magazines in Australia and America) from the up-to-date contexts and practices it involves, but the impressive surfaces and postsurrealist musings here promise further developments.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.