ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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At my command by Janet Harper
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
If I were Prospero, I’d find a boat,
rotten with ragged sails and creaking mast.
I’d fill it with presidents & their cutthroats,
men, whose crimes for profit are unsurpassed.
I’d put them out to sea and make a storm,
let them roll around on deck and puke.
In cold and dark they’d see their world transform,
their fate at last to face violent rebuke.
They’d land on shores all slick with dirty oil,
stumble into forest fires, repent and cry
for all that they have witnessed and destroyed.
My power would be to open up their eyes
to green seas and azure vaulted skies.
Janet Harper is a teacher. She is currently Poet in Residence with Pear Necessities, an organic orchard in Kent.
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