The Pleasures of C by Edward Smallfield

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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