Semblance by Chris Pusateri

-Reviewed by David Clarke–

This is a recording of a spontaneous, spoken review of Semblance (Dusie Press, 2013) by Chris Pusateri ([email protected]). These thoughts could have been developed into a more coherent (and hopefully more elegant) written review, but are presented here to give a sense of how the reviewing process works, at least in my mind. For a written review, further research would have been undertaken to resolve any open questions, and the various arguments developed would have been drawn together into a coherent whole. Reviewers want to give the impression that they have arrived at a definitive and cogent view on a text, but here the judgements remain tentative and incomplete. Retrospectively, there are other aspects I probably should have mentioned – I don’t say much about the quality of the language, for instance –, and I doubtless would have added such observations to a final written version. Instead, what this recording represents is one individual’s reaction to a piece of art, captured in real time, with no special claim to superior insight. NB The sound quality is not the best, as the review was recorded using a cheap mic and the standard Windows sound recorder software.