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Steve Ely. Englaland. Grewelthorpe, Ripon, UK. Smokestack Books (Dufour Editions, distr.). 2015. 200 pages.
Steve Ely's Englaland evokes postindustrial scenes that become more richly meaningful as he connects the present to the past. The first poem begins with an epigraph: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Despite the trans-Atlantic borrowing and the fact that Faulkner and Ely are each deeply rooted in different regions, the phrase is altogether apt. Ely's verse sweeps from the tenth century to the twenty-first with an imperative sense that this England is continuously one language, one people, and one landscape.
Ely brings ancient verse forms into contemporary English poetry in a remarkably skillful way. For example, a verse in section 1 of "The Battle of Brunanburh"...