I Live on a Raft

Elizabeth St Jacques is the author of Echoes All Strung Out and
Survivors: The Great Depression, 1929-1939.

This lean collection of nine free-verse poems can raise eyebrows on
first reading. For example, “Morning in the Apartment Block” opens
with “All night it snowed / The trees on the wallpaper bend under the
weight.” How is this possible? Only with the theme poem, which appears
last, does the reader realize these are poems of mythology and fantasy.
Had this poem been presented at the beginning, one would have been
better prepared for the bizarre images in those that precede it.

While the poems offer some interesting concepts—“wind / blowing in
the blue head of the sky” and “The shack of a tv set is snow-covered
/ and yet / in the little pot beyond the roofs / coffee is
steaming”—there is little food for thought and little to work up the
adrenaline. (Has too much been lost in translation?) More poems might
have revealed more positive qualities; as it is, these nine are too
brief, and there are far too few of them. Not recommended.