Ivanhoe Station

Description

63 pages
$10.95
ISBN 1-895636-16-7
DDC C811'.54

Author

Publisher

Year

1997

Contributor

Reviewed by Bert Almon

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and a
poet. He is the author of Calling Texas, Earth Prime, and Mind the Gap.

Review

Lyle Neff’s poems mix sexual bravura with a vaguely formulated
political awareness. The political stance appears to be left-wing, but
fails to go beyond a commendable awareness of poverty and oppression in
the Third World. He manifests sympathy with rickshaw drivers and shows
contempt for British imperialism, the Cheka, and death squads; but these
are predictable attitudes rather than incisive understanding. He uses
brutal diction in the poems about sex, a subject that he does not deal
with in an interesting way. His formal tendency in the poetry (the use
of stanzas and even rhyme) juxtaposes oddly with the lapses in taste.
This writer has promise (as reflected in the consistently well-written
“Busted Tuesday”), but the collection sends mixed signals in style
and tone.

Citation

Neff, Lyle., “Ivanhoe Station,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed November 9, 2024, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/2990.