Twine

In his splendid book of poems, twine, John Diamond-Nigh ties and un-ties the knots of mystery from our experiences with objects, locales, processes and people. Each poem remains untitled until the end, when the sudden appearance of a title becomes like an answer to a riddle, deft and memorable. From a shadow to a sports car, from a picnic to a piano to a pen, Diamond-Nigh reintroduces us to the origins of poetry (the ear-liest poems in English are riddles) with a joyous urgency and light hand. Sensuously, the poet intertwines questions with compositions to make each poem like a daffodil’s burst. From the sculptor-poet hands of John Diamond-Nigh come wonderful poems that provoke a state of wonder. Molly Peacock, author of The Analyst

These poems by John Diamond-Nigh cross a narrative spectrum from the darks of rural religion to the exuberance of life and teaching in Paris. By a sophisticated linkage of symbols, he makes each the necessary, opposite pole of the other. Plain-spoke narrative of rural Canada unites with highly complex allusions to art, and a hesitant and angst-ridden existential why?, implodes into the poems’ end and explodes out to the God and answer forsaken world surrounding him. Beautiful in its austerity, surprising in its innovative language (snow as a shredded shawl), the book moves through the desperate and confused young times of the poet to the final mature ascension towards peace.

Mark Axelrod-Sokolov, Neville Chamberlain’s Chimera, or, Nine Metaphors of Vision