Title: A lyrical voice
Product review: Fashions exist in poetry, as in most things, and David Anthony is not afraid to be unfashionable--both in using traditional forms such as sonnets, villanelles, and triolets and in revealing emotions such as affection, sympathy, and nostalgia, which can get writers labeled sentimental. But there is a subversive character to his use of forms: he uses the triolet, usually a lightweight form, to tackle serious themes, as in "A Winter Funeral," and can poke fun at the conventions of sonnet-writing in the course of writing a sonnet, as in "Stuffing It In." He has some amusing versifications of well-known jokes (my favorite is "Cushioning the Blow") and takes a wide-ranging interest in the world around him, in poems about his native Wales, England, America, and Japan, showing a fondness for Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Harry Potter, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Always accessible, he can be conversational, but most often is notable for the lilting, lyrical quality of his lines.
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