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Everywhere in The Pleasures of C, ranges of
relation—whether those of form or of content-are explored.
"An old story/mistranslated/one more time" leads the reader through
and to Mexican roads, Algerian voices, a mother at once older and
younger than her son, a "small republic" of passions and perceptions
dragged from its foundations into the sea. Yet to be in this sea
is not to be at sea. Though the poet attests, "I was lost/and have
been/lost/ever since," these poems are firmly grounded in a generosity
of impulse and meaning which orient the reader to the poetic journey
undertaken. At the end of that wandering, Edward Smallfield shows
us the habitation of the poem: for all the foreignness it can encompass,
the reader comes upon this site as its door is ajar. Entering, one
feels uncannily at home.
—Elizabeth Robinson
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