Wormwood Vermouth, Warphistory

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

“Poetry is at bottom criticism of life,” said Matthew Arnold, and
this description is eminently true of Charles Noble’s book. Ostensibly
a tribute to his friend and teacher Jon Whyte (“Ironic Grinch”),
Wormwood... also provides Noble’s own free-ranging commentary. He
writes in the “open verse” tradition of Charles Olsen and
others—incomplete periods, elliptical phrasing, “everything by
starts and nothing long.” His “campy colloquial” style includes
the scatological on occasion. But Noble is no mean scholar, and subtle
nuances continually reflect his own polymathic background. The dexterity
of his wordplay is truly astonishing; puns comic and uncomic fly up on
many a page, often with a sting in them. Fellow academics will delight
in this book, which can be perused with pleasure more than once.
Conversely, the more general reader may well be at times perplexed. This
statement would apply equally to the allusive black-and-white cover art
by A.M. Forrie.