Lawrence Moore, who has quite a bit of recent work published in a number of reputable and well-respected places such as Indigo Dreams and Dreich Magazine, and whose Twitter handle is known by many as simply @LawrenceMooreUK, is frankly unassuming as are many poets, and has patiently waited a year exactly for this much-deserved review, while the reviewer dealt with life and its turmoil. I am delighted at last to be able to bring it to my readers. Aerial Sweetshop, though dedicated as a devout tribute “For Dad,” a flyer of planes both full-scale and model, is actually an experience for every poetry reader, whether a rhymed verse addict (where Lawrence’s work shines) or one of those who prefer blank/free verse.
Moore’s verse is one distinguished in substance by melodic, singing rhythms even when not in rhyming verse, and by kind and altruistic notions. Its subjects are those of mysteries and magic, love poems, and always the sky, and looking up and flying (in both of their literal and metaphorical meanings). Its images are drawn from changing landscapes, the landscapes (when not of pure sky) both actual and even more often those of pure imagination, metaphorical landscapes. The loving rhetoric is one of both faith in a single companion’s human goodness, as well as in the charms and chances of harmless mutual mischief. The villains of the piece are responsible for submerged notes of fear of prejudice and unjust punishments, but are overcome by the claims of gentleness and the strength of togetherness. The one exception (and I’m not sure the female figure leading the narrrator in “My Ardent Friend” can actually be called a villain, in any plain sense) is one who leads on to a sort of accepted ritual or initiatory ending, which is not exactly an ending. Ah! A curious mystery to lead us in and on!
There is a temptation with the rhymed poems, because some of us have grown up familiar with or at least exposed to end-rhyme poetry, to jog-trot the wonderful meters and jar the end-rhymes, but in both the other poems, the blank/free verse poems and the rhymed ones, the rhythms change sometimes unexpectedly and stop that bar to good poetry from taking place. In those cases, if you get too caught up in the sound, you risk missing startlingly lovely and human senses in the poems, such as:
1). p. 9–“don’t let the busybodies ask you why/when they mean don’t…”
2). p. 26–“and if you snore all day/and talk while chewing on your food…”
3). p. 39–“The big wide world is interesting;/you are my greatest adventure.”
All in all, this chapbook is so worthwhile that it hardly seems a first effort at publishing poetry. It contains most nobly, generously, and lovingly a poetry that makes its own happiness, with the inclusion often of a pertinent and essential “other,” a rescuer, guide, and companion in the pieces. In conclusion, Moore’s book is a true “aerial sweetshop,” or as an American like me would perhaps put it, a “heavenly candy store,” full of all the sublime things and beings the heart most wants to have.
8/5/2023, Victoria Leigh Bennett (shadowoperator)
creativeshadows 