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A Frail Banner

by
November 2003, no. 256

beautiful, unfinished by M.T.C. Cronin

Salt, $21.95 pb, 116 pp

A Frail Banner

by
November 2003, no. 256

Like M.T.C. Cronin’s earlier collections, beautiful, unfinished is characterised by a mixture of mystical awe and formal restraint. The collection is subtitled PARABLE/SONG/CANTO/POEM’. As this suggests, it consists of a parable of sorts in verse, a sequence of songs, a set of cantos ‘minus melody’, and some poems. But in Cronin’s hands, these various forms seem based upon haiku. She writes sparely in short-lined stanzas, and she undercuts her own rhythms until it seems as if almost every poem might end in an ellipsis. 

beautiful, unfinished

beautiful, unfinished

by M.T.C. Cronin

Salt, $21.95 pb, 116 pp

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