ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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Potent political messages to a radical man of letters
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
Letters to Randall Swingler
by Andy Croft
(Shoestring Press, £10)
THE OTTAVA rima is a rhyming stanza used in the past by poets such as Sir Thomas Wyatt, Lord Byron and WB Yeats and, fittingly, it's been chosen by prolific poet, editor and publisher Andy Croft for his latest poetry collection Letters to Randall Swingler.
A brilliant exercise in political discourse, wit and irony, it's a book written out of Croft’s profound desire to establish a poetic dialogue with Swingler (1900-1967), the largely forgotten novelist, poet, playwright, librettist and editor of radical literary magazines such as Left Review, Poetry and People, Our Time, Arena and Circus.
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