We are pleased to offer a new review of Estill Pollock's 2021 poetry collection, Entropy. The review by Melissa Todd was published in the Summer 2022 issue of the English periodical, The Journal.
...
The
word 'entropy' derives from the Greek for transformation. It's come to mean an
unravelling into chaos. There is a good deal of chaos in this book, much of it
generated by war; but for me, the real meat lies elsewhere, in the more
domestic, familial work, much of it in the second section, Goners.
"Visitor Hours," the unhappy tale of a trip to a care home, triumphs:
Recognition spikes or troughs. Today, you remember
me, a little, our cup of tea
enough to
stopper the mind's drift
a moment...
"Christmas Island, 1958" left me white-knuckled with fury for the young men used a guinea pigs to test the effects of a nuclear blast, the story told simply, dispassionately, and all the more effective for it.
The timely "In Kiev" gives us some historical background to the current crisis:
Between the dungeon and power the path
A blade's edge
There is much in this book that's contemporary, as in "Monster," a sprawling beast which echoes Covid's unstoppable path, its pacy gallop, (its) guttural gasped syllables adding frenzy to the lines and our memories:
Beyond the sickness leaning into every breath
Part Three, Water Harp, consists of smaller, sketch-like verses, each named for its opening line, as if taken from a notebook found after the author's time, each a snapshot of a moment, a feeling, a day, a colour:
The mind turning from itself, regarding
Time unrecovered, the sap of
entitlement
And tomorrow
This is a book to mull on, long after you've devoured the final line.
...
The review is now listed at the end of the sequence:
https://estillpollockpoetry.blogspot.com/p/other-reviews.html
