{"id":5056,"date":"2016-01-26T23:38:28","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T23:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/?p=5056"},"modified":"2019-03-20T04:49:02","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T04:49:02","slug":"richard-vallance-reviews-all-the-babble-of-the-souk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/richard-vallance-reviews-all-the-babble-of-the-souk\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Vallance Reviews All the Babble of the Souk. Collected Poems. Robin Ouzman Hislop."},"content":{"rendered":"

Review of All the Babble of the Souk by Richard Vallance
\n 
\nIf \u201cAll the Babble of the Souk\u201d is anything but memorable \u2014 as it surely is \u2014 it is so because of its sweeping portrayal of the tumultuous market that is humankind. The \u201cbabble\u201d of this bazaar is that of all the markets in the world \u2014 irrespective of nation, language, culture or race or for that matter, at the symbolic level, of any manifestation of our nature, be it \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cevil\u201d, which are not opposing psychological or spiritual states as all too many na\u00efvely imagine, but rather their subtle blending in our psyche. There is no suggestion of the presence or absence of God or a \u201cgod\u201d. It is irrelevant. There is just humanity.
\n 
\nThe poems, mostly quasi free form, some of them highly reminiscent of haiku, range from very short to a few pages long. Except for one poem and one only, Scale Free, in which we come face to face with some of the most beautiful imagery in the entire collection, and I quote:
\n 
\nA cuckoo taunts
\nhigh in the mountain
\nwhere are you?<\/em>
\n 
\nthere is not a single question to be found in the rest of the book. All the rest of the poems consist only of statements, some of them brief, others rather too long for my taste and some even downright convoluted. When this approach to poetry composition is carried to its extreme, it can and sometimes does result in the overly prosaic. That is the only real quarrel I have with this collection. Fortunately, there are only only a handful of poems which are painfully prone to the prosaic. Among these are Mannequins, the whole series Maps 1,2,3,4, The Prisoners, Non Linear and in particular Rust (which reads more like a scientific tract than a poem), none of which have any real appeal to me.
\n 
\nThe rest of the poems run from agreeable at the very least to the truly amazing. Among those poems agreeable to the mind and\/or the ear I count: Passage, At the Party, Here Comes the Moon, Multiverse, The Pine at the Summit and Wind upon a River. Others like these will more or less please the reader. But as everyone knows, we all have our own preferences for the kinds of poetry we like. The poems which appeal more to one person appeal less to another. The aforementioned choices are merely my own.
\n 
\nNext come poems which display remarkable talent, such as: After Dylan on the Ninth Wave (which I for one particularly like), Africa North (haiku-like), A Witch for Halloween (in which we find some of the most striking chthonic imagery in the book), Core (commendable for its brevity, economy of verse & imagery), Entanglements (haiku-like), Sequence 1 & 2 (haiku-like) and Story of a Rose.
\n 
\nI have a marked preference for the poet\u2019s haiku-like poems. Haiku have always strongly appealed to me. In fact, I myself, along with Robin Ouzman Hislop and so many other truly talented haijin, have composed a considerable number of poems of this nature, many of which were published in the print quarterly, Canadian Zen Haiku (2004-2010), which is now out of print. Brevity is the soul of wit, and indeed of the memorable. It is Robin Ouzman Hislop\u2019 s more compact poems which please me the most. There are exceptions, poems which are not haiku-like or are somewhat lengthier. There are some truly memorable lines in these poems. For instance, we have:
\n 
\nfrom Africa North:
\nA winnowing canvass tosses corn <\/em>
\nand
\n... as fireflies in the blazing day.<\/em>
\nand finally
\nIn the gloaming a solitary reaper reaps its shadow.<\/em>
\n(Reminiscences of Wordsworth\u2019 s, The Solitary Reaper, one of the most astonishingly beautiful poems in English.)
\n 
\nfrom After Dylan on the Ninth Wave, there are a considerable number of memorable lines, which you can explore for yourself. The poem is not quite up to Dylan Thomas… a very tough act to follow!
\n 
\nand from Core:
\nreaching my eye\u2019s peninsula <\/em>
\n…
\nsudden scene, solitary strand<\/em>
\n 
\nAll of the poems in this class pleased me a great deal.
\n 
\nNow we come to the downright brilliant poems, of which there are naturally only a few. I might as well cite them all. They are Scale Free ( a series of haiku-like lines & almost pure haiku), A Split Second Later\u2019s Late, Laminations in Lacquer, Lucky Hat Day and Red Butterflies, all of which had a powerful psychological and spiritual impact on me. Here are just a few of the lines from these truly remarkable poems which really struck me, and I mean really \u2014
\n 
\nfrom A Split Second Later\u2019s Late:
\n… a serpent\u2019s spit according to legend.<\/em>
\n 
\nfrom Laminations in Lacquer, the gripping lines:
\nFireworks like a diaphanous lithograph
\nprint an emblazoned sky
\non the craggy mountains of the night
\nwhere comets play at kites
\n& glistening the eerie beak hisses. <\/em>
\n 
\nand from Red Butterflies, where we find some of the most highly inspired, truly imaginative lines:
\nbut as a collage on shifting sands…<\/em>
\n…
\nA sword brazed in a fire
\nthat does not distinguish
\nbetween the battle
\n& the field. <\/em>
\n 
\nI believe we can safely say that the poet has achieved a level of poetic style and content which can hardly disappoint. Some of the poems in in \u201cAll the Babble of the Souk\u201d remind me of T.S. Eliot’s \u201cThe Wasteland\u201d. Perhaps the most striking feature of this volume is the poet\u2019s portrayal of humanity, which deprives us of any escape from the darker, more insidious depths of our human condition. The most striking imagery in the entire collection forces itself on the least flattering trait of of our nature, our tendency towards \u2014 I might as well say it flat out \u2014 bestiality, which leaps to the fore in the poet\u2019s all too frequent comparison between homo sapiens and apes (King Simian, seeking simian), gorillas, baboons and other fierce beasts of that ilk, all the way to neanderthals, Australopithecus and the odious nocturnal lupine, the proverbial werewolf. Lines such as: the hairless ape, go ape, going bananas… all mercilessly zero in on our ape-like nature bedeviling our s0-called civilized veneer.
\n 
\nThere is also frequent reference to eating meat, and being eaten (we grow the meat we eat, those she didn\u2019t eat alive, children simply to feed her, how they like human flesh, to be consumed by hell), all the way through to witchcraft and Zombie imagery. The dreadful presence of these creatures of the night inexorably lurks just beneath the thin veneer our blas\u00e9 urbanity.
\n 
\nTo cut to the quick, the most memorable qualities of Robin Ouzman Hislop\u2019s poetic gifts are his penchant for economy of lines and the puissant imagery of the chthonic. Where these features dominate any poem, they impel it towards the nonpareil! Such poems soar. When it works, it works supremely well. As for the rest, there is much to please the reader.
\n 
\nOverall rating: 3.75\/ 5
\n 
\nRichard Vallance <\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\n\"Richard<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRichard Vallance, meta-linguist, ancient Greek & Mycenaean Linear B, home page: Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae, https:\/\/linearbknossosmycenae.wordpress.com<\/a>
\n 
\nPINTEREST Boards: Mycenaean Linear B: Progressive Grammar & Vocabulary,
\n 
\nhttps:\/\/www.pinterest.com\/vallance22\/mycenaean-linear-b-progressive-grammar-and-vocabulary and, Knossos & Mycenae, sister civilizations, https:\/\/www.pinterest.com\/vallance22\/knossos-mycenae-sister-civilizations<\/a>
\n 
\nAlso poetry publisher, The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes<\/em>: Anthology of sonnets of the early third millennium Le Ph\u00e9nix renaissant de ses cendres : Anthologie de sonnets au d\u00e9but du troisi\u00e8me mill\u00e9naire <\/em> Friesen Press, Victoria, B.C., Canada. \u00a9 August 2013. 35 illustrations in B & W. Author & Title Indexes. 257 pp. 315 sonnets & ghazals in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese & Persian. <\/strong>
\n 
\nhttp:\/\/vallance22.hpage.com<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nwww.facebook.com\/PoetryLifeTimes<\/a>
\nwww.facebook.com\/Artvilla.com<\/a>
\n robin@artvilla.com<\/a>
\neditor@artvilla.com<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nhttp:\/\/www.aquillrelle.com\/authorrobin.htm<\/a><\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop<\/a>
\nwww.lulu.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop <\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.amazon.com\/author\/robinouzmanhislop<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/www.innerchildpress.com\/robin-ouzman-hislop.All the Babble of the Souk<\/a><\/strong>
\n <\/p>\n

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Review of All the Babble of the Souk by Richard Vallance   If \u201cAll the Babble of the Souk\u201d is anything but memorable \u2014 as it surely is \u2014 it is so because of its sweeping portrayal of the tumultuous market that is humankind. The \u201cbabble\u201d of this bazaar is that of all the markets … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,572,366,584,94,52],"tags":[654,668,198,18,136,3,147],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5056"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5056"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6909,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5056\/revisions\/6909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}