Under the Night Sun

Olga Costopoulos teaches English at the University of Alberta.

Randy Lundy’s first collection of poems is divided into five sections:
“Bone-roots,” “Impossible Flowers,” “Portraits,”
“Moon-songs,” and “My Lodge.” There are some very good poems in
every section, but the poet has a limited poetic vocabulary, ultimately
annoying to the reader. The problem of such recurring words as
“tongue,” “flesh,” “bone,” “touch” could have been
solved through better editing. There is a wide range of sensibility
here, from the tentative young lover and the somewhat divided soul of
“Portraits,” to the native celebrant of the seasons in
“Moon-songs,” to the attempt at “going home again” in “My
Lodge.” The sections are quite uneven, perhaps a result of the
somewhat self-conscious attempt to find an appropriate, individual
voice, as opposed to a “group” voice.