文章基本信息

标题：Fate's Kite: Poems, 1991-1995
作者：Duncan, Susan L
期刊名称：Southern Living
印刷版ISSN：0038-4305
出版年度：1996
卷号：Jun 1996
出版社：Southern Progress Corp.

Fate's Kite: Poems, 1991-1995

Duncan, Susan L

Fate's Kite: Poems, 19911995

by Dave Smith (LSU Press, $19.95)

Like the kite in his title, the author gracefully swoops toward his goal: the moments of life that flare into poetry.

In this collection of 13-line poems, Dave Smith, coeditor of The Southern Review, fixes his gaze upon the world's jumbled chaos and reduces it to the hard, pebbled musings of a realist. We live in a damaged world, he seems to be saying, but a world in which the tattered rags of the lost can look like-even become-brave and beautiful banners.

At times the syntax can be difficult to follow, but these poems are worth multiple readings to savor the tang of Smith's language. He offers up no wasted words or emotions, just clean, spare, prose-like lines hammered from the matter of everyday life.