Published in Overland Issue Print Issue 199 Winter 2010 · Reviews / Main Posts Views of the Hudson Pam Brown Angela Gardner Shearsman Books ISBN 9781848610804, $15.55 This collection’s sixty poems are subtitled ‘psalms’ and each is numbered. There’s something immediately Scorsese-esque about the subtitle ‘A New York Book of Psalms’ but Angela Gardner’s New York experience is too coolly considered for that association. As her subtitle implies, New York evokes a religiosity: ‘I see moonlight as the promised land.’ The collection starts on the plane trip and records the poet’s discovery of the place and its culture. The ‘Views’ of the title suggests a detachment: Gardner is not inhabiting the place but rather looking at it, and this sometimes renders the poems vague or impressionistic. She plays with signs without displaying feeling or overloading them with meaning or irony. Occasionally, there is a lament against materialism and its urban problems, but Gardner’s psalms offer no way forward. Helplessly, the homeless or vagabonds become ‘stylised’ – ‘while those left behind huddle in makeshift tents/(that laconic shelter left by incidental action)/He leans in the doorway almost stylised/a full length photorealist portrait’. There is one startling instance of a raised voice when the narrator’s ‘shoes pinch at these new streets/and another day’s high tide/of litter hits the sidewalks’. The pilgrim declares ‘Emptiness, fullness what’s the difference?/Fuck beauty!’ yet, unable to sustain her anger, she collapses – ‘tears stream down my face’ – at the end of the poem. Competent, confident, calm – these poems are not representations. Like the cover image, they comprise indistinct surfaces/textures, aesthetic shapes. This suite is minimal and exacting. It’s art-poetry, a sustained ‘looking at’ the views, like a film shot from a window. Pam Brown Pam Brown has published many chapbooks, pamphlets and full collections of poetry, most recently Stasis Shuffle (Hunter Publishers, 2021). She lives in a south Sydney suburb on reclaimed swampland on Gadigal Country. More by Pam Brown › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 1 First published in Overland Issue 228 20 November 202320 November 2023 · Reviews Justice, death or revenge: Brian Merchant’s Blood in the Machine Samantha Floreani If you’ve ever been called a Luddite, it was probably meant as an insult. The Luddite name has been so powerfully besmirched that it is now commonly used as a pejorative to denote technophobia or an irrational aversion to progress. At the heart of Brian Merchant’s Blood in the Machine is a denouncement of this mischaracterisation. And in dismantling the myth, Merchant revitalises the legend. First published in Overland Issue 228 10 November 202311 November 2023 · Subscriberthon 2023 On the final day of Subscriberthon, Overland’s most important members get to have their say Editorial Team BORIS A quick guide to another year of Overland, from your trusty feline, Boris. I liked the ginger cat story, though it made my human cry. I liked the talking cat, too, but I’m definitely in the “not wasting my time learning to talk” camp. But reading is good. And writing is fun, though it’s been challenging […]
