Slow-Moving Target

"Hear the rustle all down the block as people unwrap the box of the Fifties. Life will be a clock, a pet, it will wag its tail and lie down. Food will glisten in mounds on the breakfast tables and skirts will go taffeta-taffeta." -- from "Aldredge Place" In her second book, Slow-Moving Target, Sue Wheeler unwraps more than the Fifties. She unwraps a whole shopful of environments and events, and winds them up and sets them down to delight her readers. There is no sentimentalizing here - either of people or of other places and times - and yet the writing is so consistently sharp, perceptive, and clear, that the overall direction is always towards hope, towards the light. "Here is a poet who keenly observes the world and its people with humour and love. I will return to these pages again and again for their verbal surprises and unflinching honesty. While highly intelligent, these poems are not intellectual; they speak to us in language that packs a passionate wallop." - Patricia Young