Review of Transom by Rick Mullin

Dismal things embedded in a city-scape of soaring architecture gaze outward like Gothic demons into the crisp sunlit clarity of Rick Mullin’s poetic universe. Mullin notices them there and paints their likenesses onto the pages of Transom, his newest collection of ground-breaking poetry. Unlike some of his grander books such as Soutine (a stunning verse biography of a neglected artist) and Sonnets from the Voyage of the Beagle (a wondrously detailed retelling of Charles Darwin’s epic journey), Mullin scales down his subjects to pedestrian or, more to the point, commuter proportions.

 As a consummate formalist Mullin uses measure and rhyme in a fifteen line sonnet-like invention he calls a Third Sancerre. Appropriately enough the name suggests a French wine region noted for its elegant, yet very drinkable, wines grown in flinty, mineral rich soils. For more of my review of Transom go here:  http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2017/03/transom-poems-2016-by-rick-mullin.html