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“Before The Rainbow Fades” will have great appeal to those whose taste is for light verse, and if you enjoyed the first two volumes in this latest collection from Keith and Elizabeth Stanley-Mallett, you will certainly want to experience the colourful spectrum of work presented here in all its magical hues.
After all, as Keith points out in “A Picture for the Soul”, the pen is often at least as mighty as the paintbrush, which “… is truly matched by the pen, The weaving of such work By author or poet, colours The imagination in passion’s verse, Thus painting a picture for the soul”.
And so these light verses blend a range of subject matters through the duo’s prisms to offer us again their “pictures for the soul” of everything from the purely domestic – such as electric fans and drains – to the origins of the universe – as in Elizabeth’s “The Moon” and Keith’s “A Random Occurrence?”
Most of the settings are ones with which every reader can identify – the hearth, a bookshop, a lonely beach, the garden, a school trip, a country lane, the village green; but, as with the previous collections, “Before The Rainbow Fades” occasionally jolts us with a sudden change of tack, as we are plunged headlong into an unsettling environment.
Two examples are to do with war, as when Elizabeth bemoans the treatment meted out to “Cowards?” in the Great War and when Keith evokes the fears and relief of “The Gunner” at the front.
A recurring theme is personal emotion: in “A Special Place”, for instance, Elizabeth describes the way her emotions fight to take the upper hand over “base logic”. And in “A Fifth Anniversary Poem of A Telephone Call”, Keith movingly recalls the day when “Two people met and found – A new life, a new love”.
But the true colours of this poetic rainbow are best viewed via the book itself … which is highly recommended!
Richard Fox MA (Lit)
Rating:  [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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