These full text reviews for David Hunter Sutherland's groundbreaking new collection of poetry, Between Absolutes are also available as Review Excerpts.

"As the editor of a literary journal, I have the daunting task of having to sort through the poetic musings of hundreds of writers. It is a task I relish, but I sometimes relate my job to that of the South Seas pearl divers. The tedious process of shucking poems for hidden meanings or seeds of developable talent rarely, if ever, reveals a treasure.

I became aquainted with David Sutherland's poetry in 1996 as I prepared to launch the September issue of ANTHEM. His poems arrived just as we were about to publish, and I was hesitant to tackle a five poem submission at the midnight hour of publication. I gave the poems a quick read and put them aside.

Later that evening, when the crescendo of activity surrounding publication subsided, words came to me. They were Sutherland's words. They had penetrated my reluctance to absorb them and were clamoring for attention. I returned to the studio, and there, in silence, I carefully reread David's submission. Two hours later, the site was being retooled, illustrations were hatched with a fury, and David became our featured poet.

David's work comes at you like a heavyweight's fist. His words, like invisible bale hooks, plunge into the subconscious then reel you back for a second, a third, a fourth read. Truth? Sutherland knows nothing but the truth, and he wields words with the ferocity of a slashing sword, or the delicacy of a surgeon's scalpel. Such is his literary dexterity. When you find the center of his work, your journey into all we should know of mortality begins.

David's new book Between Absolutes is, for anyone thrown into the desert of contemporary poetry, a feast. The slash and burn mentality of contemporary poets has been challenged and exposed for its fraudulence through the work of this thoughtful, literate, and passionate master craftsman. After reading a small offering of David's work, I thirsted for the mental challenge a collection of his work would provide. I am quenched. Between Absolutes is, for those of us who traverse vast expanses of our contemporary poetic wasteland, a long, cool drink. Students take note! Find Sutherland! Learn!

As we enter the new century, I expect David will become a formidable presence. When questioned about the direction new poets should take on the road to perfecting their craft, I will send them to Sutherland, again, and again. It is time for all poets who have achieved their notoriety through the flim flam of contemporary publishing to step aside and let the real thing pass through."

E.A. Fichtl, Managing Editor
ANTHEM

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"With so much discussion and preoccupation regarding the marginalization in poetry today, one would be hard pressed to find the time to read even one book of poetry. Since I do not spin within this mystical circle of poetic circumstance, I've had plenty of free time to read a few short and even long poetry books.

A recent feasting of David Hunter Sutherland's "Between absolutes" rendered a delightfully serious and heavily basted intellectual and spiritual influence of both contemporary and classic cuisine. Sutherland's exquisite use of language and sense of place is intrinsic within this collection.

It is essentially a subtle melopoeic language using subtle rhythm and rhyme, an instinctive placing of vowels, and -- most characteristically -- a gait that is almost ceremonial, the serious saunter of dreamwalking.

Sutherland's work demonstrates a concrete connectedness between this world and the core of humanness. He writes with such finesse, power and intelligent joy, that to identify it as such seems a bit misleading. Sutherland is willing to exert the pressures of traditional formality.

Indeed, the strength of an inclusive imagination and discipline which correlates science and wonder is powerful enough to keep things intact, which is precisely what David Sutherland has done -- and done well.

Between Absolutes is an enjoyably rigorous and delightful book, by one of the finest young voices in the country."

Deborah-Anne Simeroth, Editor
POET'S EDGE

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