As Unavoidable as History

by Adrian Manning.. Hemispherical Press, C/o Justin.Barrett, 274 Ramona Avenue, Salt Lake City, UT 84115-2115. hemisphericalpress.com

Book Review by Michael Basinski

Maybe he is a form of Poe poet, me thinks reading these poems, deep stewing and brewing steeped in poems as a form of sadness, intense, tight, a tight fist of words and opening palms, a stark pleading begging poems palms opening saying I have no weapons but words that open like wounds. Melancholic and brooding, the poems stand witness to the sadness that is part of everyone, the door to door, day to day forgotten sadness that otherwise, except in poems like these, left on the page from behind the black curtains, would be neglected. Manning finds them. Seeks them. The memories are all about bubbling up here. Artefacts, the poet calls them in his poem, Artefacts. They are as, the poet says, “unwilling to be buried/ or forgotten/ by time.” Adrian Manning, he who remembers with the mind of the poet, learns and he teaches with noir light of the poem.