As much as I wanted to love this book, because the premise was really good because I was really intrigued by the description, I could not get into the poetry I was presented with.
There is no doubt that the poet has talent because every line in this book reads well, but his way with words failed to evoke any feelings in me and I was unable to connect with the scenes I was presented with.
The poems read well, even though there is use of steam unconsciousness the poems are easy to read and navigate, and it is easy to follow the narrator.

Attributed to the Harrow Painter by Nick Twemlow is one of the Kuhl House poets' publications from University of Iowa Press. The Kuhl House series is dedicated to contemporary poets who write outside the usual traditions. Twemlow’s work includes Palm Trees, and his poems have appeared in Court Green, jubilat, Lana Turner, and the Paris Review. He co-edits Canarium Books and is a senior editor at the Iowa Review. He teaches at Coe College and lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

The collection starts with a poem the poet taking his son to a museum and asking the child's opinion of Schnabel’s The Death of Fashion to which the child gives a very expected opinion. The Harrow Painter, likewise a painter but in ancient Greece, is described as minor, but with some charm. That is the life of most. We travel a fairly linear path with some peaks and valleys. Twemlow travels back in his mind and poetry to the high and lower points of life. In particular, his English teacher Mr. C seems much like mine Ms. H in brutality. There are good times with friends and of course experimentation with drugs in his younger days. The poet is holding the future in his hands (his son) and looking at how he arrived at the present, but with an eye still, too, on the future for his son.

Although this collection isn't traditional in form, it is much closer than works like Eric Linsker's La Far. The lines are short but the poems are long. There is a stream of consciousness flow in the poems but it is very structured. Alliteration and a strong rhythm are felt throughout all the lines. The reader can easily get caught up in the rhythm of the writing. A very good collection of experimental poetry that is not too far from traditional poetry or even lyrics.

I was very excited to read this poetry collection, but I am afraid it did not connect with me as well as I hoped it would. Some of the poems seemed too chaotic to follow. There were some stanzas I really liked, but overall I think this style of poetry is probably not for me.

&don't worry so much
About whether they think
You're a boy or a girl.
You have much
To look forward to
In the matrix
Of gods and trends.

I have always thought preference for poetry is very strictly individual, this is true for all genres of literature, of course- it's just that to me poetry gives more freedom for interpretation of forms and compositions.

Is poetry the most elevated type of writing, or it's just "documenting " one's own oblivion; is the poet like the Harrow painter- "minor " , poorly equipped, just more than ordinarily competent, or actually a genius- honestly- I don't know... and that's what I like about verses.
Reading it doesn't always depend on your mood, or anything- sometimes a sentence just hits you and well...that's it.

With all that being said, and since each poem reading is a personal experience, I am not going to write an analysis about Nick Twemlow's poems. I'll say I liked the author's style, as I am very fond of stream of consciousness- this is my type of poetry and will share with you my favorite parts of the book :

This feeling we all
Know each other
From some past life
Spent holding hands
Walking over the precipice Into the volcanic bowels
Of Hell, this otherness, Fixed into a buried
Set of neurons native To homo sapiens sapiens, Has
surfaced surfaced With a fury,
Furious with spouts
Of pepper spray
Spraying the frozen air
Waiting for history's Next victim to occupy, Occupies
the space
In front of it.


I imagine
All my obsessions
Abstracting into a color, Sometimes
A version of blue,
Sometimes
I can't work it out,
I have such
An impoverished
Color palette
To work with, so I get
Caught up
In this, my inability to see Color in any interesting
way,&then
The whole thing falls
Apart& I am back
In here, where
The walls are pink
&the pixels
Laugh like dropised clowns.

As I smoked
&stared out between The slashes of frost
On the window,
Not thinking
So much as enduring This adolescence
Became a lesson
In how to wait
For nothing to happen.

So you
Tell me
How your
Radical formalism
Saves lives
Exactly?

I really enjoyed the first poem in this collection, but didn't really care for the rest. The writing tended to be very stream-of-consciousness, which has never been my thing, and dealt largely with topics I don't really enjoy reading about.

This collection of poems was a little too deep and dark for me.