two new poetry books

Rain Charm for the Duchy, Ted Hughes
a small (47 page) exquistely printed folio of occasional verse by ted hughes, of his time as lauerete. it is an ancient book, royalist, conserative, deep about the chtonic power of nation and myth that rise around royalty. it also underlines his power as a great english mystic, this is a poem about the secret magick of albion. the two small songs for beatrice (her birth and her chrisening), which use her birthdate (8/8/88) and her star sign (leo) as a tangent, about the accidental nature of reward and risk, as it realtes to nations, and to basic humans, is masterful in how concise it is...a poem called little salmon hymn, a scottish rewrite of the psalmists, almost, is an idyllic little acardian thing, and it takes omse bravery to write about all of the miracles of creation and death, in a poem for the queens birthday, including " she links an arm/with a Fox glove, raggily dressed, Long-bodied, a rough blood-braid of dark nipples" . done late in his life, before the mawkish sorting of the birthday letters--his masculine, "red of tooth and claw" nature here, is so ancient that when he talks about contemporary things,like television or tabloids or car tops, he descends quickly into bathos (22)

Blert--Jordan Scott.

Scott, a stutter, amasses an amazing chunk of aural signifed texts, the words collected her abut, enjamb, and tumble into meanings about the formal nature of language, where meaning becomes a physiological process. an incredible important application of the abstractions of people like ron silliman. i wish i could hear him read it. (it ends as an essay, and there is one poem, that is repeated three times, if you must have an idea, have a short term idea:

a cocoa puff
a two step bluff
a fleeting rime

that suggests how meta contextual, amusing, and amused he can be. that it becomes a call for language as it is spoken, as opposed to what it should be, and that ti becomes punch drunk with language, are bonuses (21)