Fluttertongue 5: Everything Appears to Shine with Mossy Splendour

By Steven Ross-Smith

Is he talking about botany or...hmmm...ahhh...well now. The very act of reading Steven Ross Smith' fifth volume of his Fluttertongue series draws shock, secret smiles, and out-loud exclamations from the most stoic, stuffed-shirt readers of poetry. Rife and ribald, his disjunctive prose-poem forms contain stimulation for all five senses. Jumping off the page in explorations of joined oppositions, the richly-worded poems reveal beyond-intimate experiences of the physical world, exposing snapshots of human experience and relationships with nature. Personal-impersonal juxtapositions, syntactic structure, and randomness appear here in disjunctive prose poem form to express primal-scream poetry.

Each page sets a prose-poem atop a sly and sensuous moss-like footer that unfolds at the bottom of each page, giving its own experience of wink-and-nudge word play. The book becomes a distraction in itself, tempting the reader to peek ahead, disregarding proper book-reading etiquette.

With Smith's irresistible word-play and a deep and complex poetic sensibility, Fluttertongue 5 is a rich, rewarding and delightful read.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0888013787
• ISBN13: 9780888013781
• Release Date: April 2011
• Publisher: Turnstone Press
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.4" x 8.3"