Reviews
Janice has a fine ear for the rhythm of line and stanza and the silences that lie between them …
Tobias Hill
The opener At the Trumpet Menders House is a highlight for me: at the trumpet menders house/music is kept in jars on the mantelpiece/and tiny brass screws, the ones we lost/have found their way here.//This is where all the broken things come. Another peak is the excellent, haunting Walking the Hawk. On my hand/close to my body/a darkness of feathers - //talons own my thumb.//For a moment there is only/the hawk, the grey light, me. I enjoy the economy and confidence of Fixter’s best work and would have appreciated the chance to see more… Both poet and press are worth supporting.
Iota 71
Overall, though, [The New Haiku; edited by John Barlow and Martin Lucas] is a fine anthology and a significant addition to the haiku literature. Given the limitations inherent in the editors’ selection criteria for the poems, this anthology contains many worthy haiku and senryu. A few examples:before the interview/my calmness/ unnerving me Janice Fixter
Lee Gurga (Modern Haiku)
Janice Fixter’s opening line At forty, my mother threw knives instantly alerts the reader to the deceptive ease with which her poems, and her poetic flights, segue between reality and fantasy, between the tangible and the insubstantial, between, as two of her disconcerting poem-titles would imply, Home Truths and Dark matters… Anne-Marie Fyfe
a kind of slow motion is Fixter’s first full collection, one with a rich ear for all the rhythmic cadences of nature and human interaction. The poet embraces the visceral along with the lyrical, using ‘Home Truths’ as a tender reverie about a mother who throws “whet-stone knives, sharpened.” From simple hymns to harmony where the author wants “to feel nothing but ocean” to mournful verse lamenting that “home is a long way in any direction“, Fixter’s deceptively simple work is powerfully attractive.
PBS Bulletin Autumn 07