#4 Beyond This Dark House

GGK wrote this incredible series of books in the 80's which many folks have read and thought quite good. The experience of gradual awareness and recognition, of a setting that seem somehow familiar, was a truly incredible feeling, and not one that us middle of nowhere people get very often. The same familiar recognition is woven through the poems of Beyond This Dark House. Good poetry is always deeply personal, whether a system of signs and signals is employed, or spoken plainly - so to applaud GGK for the intensity and candor of his work is unnecessary here. It is enough to say that it was good, and for all the reasons that poetry is good (when it is, and that is seldom).

Beyond This Dark house is the first literary work that made me seriously consider that there is some regional style, some economy of words and favoured adjectives that make up the expression of a group of people used to being roasted in the summer and frozen solid in winter. The possibility shakes my own personal attachment to the concept of brash individualism on which I have previously prided myself. I'll reserve my judgment for the time being, but suspect that I am a product of my environment in this, as much as in anything else. Drat.