The Daily Glance

Vernon Frazer's Holiday Idylling is a book of sound. After the first few poems, I turned off the part of my mind that searches for meaning and just listened to the words ringing through the pieces.** Assonance and consonance seem to be the ruling lords of these pieces. Frazer repeats the same words over and over, so it starts to feel like the sounds blend over the entire book.

An obsolescent overture motif
glancing awry, the sway of dawn’s
blessing sky:

The sound play in these lines is so heavy that it starts to seem like a parody of poetry that plays with sound this way. Really, this book seems like pure experiment to me, and it's interesting primarily because Frazer is the one doing the exploration.

**As I still have a slight fever, perhaps turning off my already limited reading mind was not a good idea.

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