www.wreckingballpress.com

•   The Reater
•   Richard Adams
•   Elizabeth Barrett
•   Matthew Caley
•   Brendan Cleary
•   Tim Cumming
•   Fiona Curran
•   Dan Fante
•   Geoff Hattersley
•   Mark Kotting
•   Gerald Locklin
•   Roddy Lumsden
•   Daithidh MacEochaidh
•   Ben Myers
•   Tony O'Neill
•   Milner Place
•   Eva Salzman
•   Jules Smith
•   Adam Strickson

home

Eva Salzman -
ONE TWO II.

With two published collections to her credit and this remarkable recent compilation, Eva Salzman is one of the most accomplished poets working in Britain today. She is a New Yorker, but such is the universal catchment area of poetry now that her living and writing in Britain does not make her either an American or a British Poet, but simply a very good one.

Perhaps, though, her wit, directness and fresh approach to language, whether fierce or lyrical, may be seen as American qualities. With her second volume, Bargain with the Watchman (OUP), several notches of excitement were racked up. Technically, the book dazzled.

Her latest work adds a classic tone to her sureness, with poems which deal with twins, fate, oracular pronouncements and the conditioning of lives at the hands of the gods. The book includes excellent poems about uncompromising subjects – viz the destroyed Afghan Buddhas, the unreliability of memory, the Brooklyn Bridge (this a marvelously evocative sonnet).

Another section of the book is made up of runic verses composed in and around music. It is one of Eva Salzman’s special gifts to bring to the assembling of poetry some of the sense she has of the way music is put together. This is not just parallel lyricism, but a true understanding of how music and poetry share thematic bases, and an aphoristic economy.

From the first moment I encountered her poetry, I knew that Eva Salzman was the real thing, devoted to a demanding but sparkling art. She is at the height of her powers at the moment.
Peter Porter

"A major talent ... Plenty of bite ... the hormones are almost good enough to smell."
Poetry Review

"An army of Muses for the sex war ... Men are hardly adequate to Salzman's imagination."
Sean O`Brien, Sunday Times

"Appraising eye and sharp tongue get to work on sex and men."
Independent on Sunday

"Her imagery can be stunningly beautiful with great lyric power. Eva Salzman is a young poet of proven merit and great potential."
William Meredith & Richard Harteis

To The Enemy

Sit down, have a chair and relax,
you who've made the former friends bleed.
Here are all my questionable expenses
for the tax-man, the faithless to read.

Okay, so I drink, talk to strangers,
loudly befriending at parties
those lacking position, power or wealth,
who aren't distinquished or arty.

I slept with a man who was handsome
instead of the powerful editor
(not that I've ever claimed purer ethics -
it's just that I never knew better).

Please outline what's wrong with my life plan,
help map the route of my passions,
edit me into comfortable style
according to science or fashion.

It's not that I don't have ambition
or a liking for money or fame.
Is it just that i misinterpret the rules?
Don't I cheat well enough at the game?

Eva Salzman
One Two II.
Wrecking Ball Press
ISBN 1-903110-09-2