Blue Mind's Flower

Louise E. Allin, a poet and short-story writer, is also an English instructor at Cambrian College.

It is difficult to find a core to Read’s poems in this volume. True,
she does have skill with physical description, but there is such
continual metamorphosis (“singing forests / spring from stone / people
become leaves / whispering in pine branches” and “dragon’s teeth
sprout men / rivers spawn women”) that one is left spinning endlessly
through a vortex: an objective correlative with no object. Similes and
metaphors dash forward with little satisfaction. There is erudition
here, there is history: the Montreal massacre, the Mandelas, Eurydice,
Giacometti, van Gogh, and Emily Carr. In those pieces, Read finds a more
lasting voice. In the rest, the merely evocative poems, it is all the
same; nothing stands out, nothing captivates. It is telling that Read
has had success as a tactile artist; perhaps that is the more promising
medium for her evanescent message.