Everything is Strange

Everything is always strange in the poetry of Frank Kuppner. His first Carcanet book was a single poem, “A Bad Day for the Sung Dynasty” (1984, Poetry Book Society Recommendation) running to 511 Oriental Quatrains, a kind of Procrustean Bed of Ware accommodating a multitude of four-line feelings, experiments, jests and characters. Then came “The Intelligent Observation of Naked Women” (1987), with five substantial poems including the “Five Quartets” and much else besides. In the 1989 collection “Ridiculous, Absurd, Disgusting!”, with its oblique glance at Rimbaud, he managed to include three poems, one in prose, one in verse, and one half-way between. “Everything is Strange” consists of two long works: the title poem and “In a Persian Garden”.