Nicolette

Louise E. Allin, a poet and short-story writer, is also an English instructor at Cambrian College.

If you like obsessive romance and experimental multimedia poetry, and if
you have an hour to spend (as the author suggests), you will enjoy
Robert Zend’s homage to his eternal love
“nicolettenicollettenicolettenicolette.” The internationally
published poet, radio producer, and visual artist bares his soul on a
wild ride from Canada across Europe in quest of Nicolette. In an
illuminating tradition reaching back to Smollett and Yeats, Zend
mindmaps and typesets to suit his mood. Some pages are dots, some are
dark, and some are reading plans based on narration, chronology, or
structure. Zend as director invites the reader to choose his or her own
path through the “youandI” experience. Free verse alternates with
prose, dramatic dialogue, letters, lists, and sometimes a page of
numbers. Ecstasy’s torments teach the seminal lesson, “Your love is
dead only when the next love begins to ache.” Admittedly, however,
some might take offence at the stereotypical middle-aged male at the
heart of this drama who enjoys his wife, his superficial lovers, and his
child-goddess. That he claims to have fallen in love with Nicolette when
she was 5 and he was 25 adds a final dark side.