The Written Voice

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
author of Calling Texas.

David Knight is better known as a novelist than as a poet. These are
competent poems, often written in traditional forms or syllabics, but
they generally don’t rise above competence; there are too many
occasional poems here, and some definite oddities, like the poems from
unpublished science-fiction novels. Perhaps the finest poem is the
opening one, “Images of Beijing on Multicultural Television,” with
its horrific image of a live carp dipped in hot oil and eaten while
still gasping. It’s a hard poem for the rest of the book to live up
to. One difficulty with the collection is its airless quality; too many
poems in too many styles crowd the pages, making it difficult to discern
the good poems among the decidedly minor ones as the reader goes from
disturbing poems about capital punishment to a squib about a child
wanting Cocopops in a supermarket. Knight’s moral passion is clear, as
is his devotion to craft, but he needed a better editor.