Preludes and Fugues

Edward L. Edmonds is a professor of English at the University of Prince
Edward Island.

As the title suggests, this book consists of several variations on a
theme, with a no less epigrammatic prologue and epilogue. The poems are
all short, succinct, carefully crafted statements, ringing the changes
over a whole gamut of human life and experience. Many come across as
fragments of intimate conversation or snatches of expressed opinion,
concise, reflective, penetrating, and cryptic. Section 4 shows a strong
feminist perspective.

Candelaria “scores” his poems with such typographical devices as
spacing between words and phrases. This helps the reading of them,
whether silently or aloud. The latter in fact is to be recommended, for
Candelaria is no mean master of the rhythms of everyday speech. He has
an uncanny skill in exploiting to the full the echoic, evocative
associations of a word’s meaning (his use of the half-rhyme is but one
example). He is also a scholar’s poet. Some comparable knowledge of
other languages and literatures will certainly illuminate the meaning of
several poems.

An attractive and meaningful cover design further enhances this
collection—Candelaria’s seventh book of poems.