Inside of Midnight

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

This slim volume of 64 poems comprises a sequence of short, pungent
comments on what Ezra Pound once aptly dubbed “a botched
civilization.” Button vividly portrays all its tawdriness, aridity,
transience, and occasional menace. Poems 41 through 45, all
appropriately titled, present bitter political satire on “what man has
made of man.” Yet through all this prevailing cynicism, Button finds
vestigial comfort just in being: “and I celebrate the simple / body in
which i dwell.” His images are crisp, precise, evocative (e.g., “a
razor sharp stillness”).

Inside of Midnight is one of a series that presents “first poems”
by emerging Canadian writers. Thistledown Press is to be congratulated
on its initiative.