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Unforgiving in its honest depictions
Breaking from the more commonly maudlin or soi-distant poetic observations, Michael Knox treats us to a revival of a dramatic epic in The North End Poems. This volume details the squalor and evanescence of main character nick Macfarlane, a steeltown warehouse worker whose gritty perspective is broadened by a university student named Carla. Each poem annunciates its nested group of main and supporting characters whose poetic sketches are so visceral as to grant the reader the feel of cigarette ash, grime, and blood under his or her fingers. Unforgiving in its honest depictions, the reader gains intimate access to every blemish, callus, and paunch that populates the dismal region of North End. Buoyed by a believably crude region-specific dialect in parts, Knox produces a truly expansive poetic portrait that is neither derogatory nor a fatuous tribute to the tired standards of blue collar romanticism. And if Knox has intended to offer a critique of North End - a metaphorical placeholder for many industry boom-to-bust towns - it is done with subtlety and nuance without overbearing moralism. The poems do not tarry with endless and tedious reflection, but rather are in the service of respecting the pace of the characters' thoughts and deeds. Each line appears hammered into place, a sharp reporting blow that brings to the fore the tireless craftsmanship of workaday realism. The reader can expect to be drawn in by the bald drama of the characters in each poetic sequence, and to be kept in a kind of headlock of rapt attention as they story unfurls.
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