cover image ARRAY(0x1d15f98)

ARRAY(0x1d15f98)

Drew Milne, . . ARRAY(0x19cead8), $10 (70pp) ISBN 978-1-930589-09-4

The Scottish-born, Cambridge-based Milne is not yet 40, yet he supplies plenty of fiercely intelligent material, fueled by acutely measured prosody and an array of dazzling syntactic maneuvers, for a selected. Milne, editor of the journal and press Parataxis, puts on a face of aggro-modernistic glee while parodying 21st-century political quagmire. The verbal pyrotechnics can move so quickly one might miss the cartoonish humor ("tuned to fine leaves of/ ouch") mixed with lyrically inclined moments of over-the-top satire: "Die,/ die, my text,/ like any temp or co-worker/ left for dead/ amid the station-wagons/ of the photocopier." Milne's poems refuse to allow a reflective, single voice to stand in for universal suffering and provide expressive catharsis—"I am aid pack, cash-crop and pearl mint tax heaven"—a position that connects his work with strains of the Language and New York Schools, as well with J.H. Prynne and other Cambridge poets. Mars Disarmed contains the complete texts of four sequences not included in any form in The Damage. The most provocative in the current political climate is "The Gates of Gaza," which refuses to bring its disturbing half-images of first-world splendor, old-world doom and contemporary geographical mismatch into focus, in a manner that mirrors the half-truths of media sound bites: "derided yet from slaughter free to/ burn up as death squads clear the/ Workers Party now no work flow// has the least string of entailment/ so tight as could draw phusis off/ charmingly polished pants." It's a kind of writing that won't work for everyone, but Milne's energy and commitment to oblique truth-telling will come through clearly, even to those unsympathetic to his forms or aims. (Damage: May; Mars: July 1)