Acetylene
Cochrane, Geoff
Published 2001
ISBN 9780864734198
Format paperback
Category Poetry
RRP: $24.95
Geoff Cochrane’s poetry is at once lush and severe. There
is no one else quite like him.
At the heart of Geoff Cochrane’s third full-length collection
of poems is a moving sequence on the death of the poet’s father.
Traceable in the poems that surround it are other narratives of
loss and need: of an unconsummated love, and of a life at the very
margin of the new economy.
Milestone 2
My father dies;
I’m diagnosed as having . . . never mind;
my longing for a leggy journalist
is slowly starved to death.
Yes, where I heal I’m bland.
A coffee bar provides
festivity enough, my daily fix.
I read the blackboard chalked in limes and pinks:
Obey your thirst -
Bacon and Eggs, $6.00 -
Extract me the soldier from the sputnik.
Praise for Acetylene
. . . vivid and moving. The stirring sequence on the
death of Cochrane's father is quite outstanding.
Hamish Wyatt OTAGO DAILY TIMES
Cochrane's poetry is both dirty and miraculous.
SALIENT