Location: South Africa
Member Since:
Nov. 02, 2011
melanie stark
Smashwords book reviews by melanie stark
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Col's Phantasm Speaks
on Nov. 17, 2011
(no rating)
Col’s Phantasm Speaks” and “Detained Above an Hour” ooze passion, erudition, joy and pride in language, and are a riot of words, words, words. The sheer exuberance of the writing, and the fun the author has in experimenting with different styles and voices and idioms, is captivating. Written after Fiona survived surgery for a brain tumor, the two works rollick and ramble, and explore many “big ideas”, not unnaturally mirroring the emotional and physical states of a recuperating and recovering tumor survivor, who experiences everything around her with senses heightened by her traumatic and, ultimately, enlivening experience. Both works speak of and to transmutation, just as Fiona transmutes her near-fatal experience into a life affirming journey back into writing, and into the rigours and joys of poetry. The “joys” appear to be debatable: the poet has an “unhappy fate”, becoming “transfixed” and “entombed” and “accursed”: tormented by visions, alone, demented, “foresworn by man and ghost”. All this is given the lie of course by the beauty and power of the visions, the exquisite agony of the creative process and the magnificence of the language. And the fact of immortality, no matter how hard the winning thereof. Somehow, in Fiona’s hands, and given her story, this is not merely a powerful example of poetic irony, but a profound lesson about the challenges of life and living. Life is wonderful. Because of it all, despite it all. Not everyone gets to complete the incomplete, finish the unfinished. It almost makes you grateful Fiona is not a composer or sculptor. Schubert’s “Unfinished” and Michelangelo’s “Sleepers” can rest in pieces…….. I love the power of potentiality in “the unfinished”, and the intellectual and emotional provocation that brings. So do I prefer the unfinished Kubla Khan? Yes. Do I think that Fiona has done a very good job in presenting her response to the mystery and provocation of this unfinished work? Yes. Do I think the two are mutually incompatible? No. Melanie Stark