Great Regulars: The plain rectangular blocks of this week's poem,

"Twenty-Sixth Winter", evoke clear sunlight, long shadows, clean sheer rock-sides. The poet's language, on the other hand, is at times both idiomatic ("to only let her go/another winter") and heavy with a slightly bookish richness. "Once I chased the rainbow's end on horseback" he writes in another alliteratively-titled poem, "Exercise in Excess" and there is something of that quest in many pieces of work, the rainbow being poetry itself.

[John] Dofflemyer writes kindly about animals, reminding us that those he is currently grazing might be among the last.

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week: Twenty-Sixth Winter by John Dofflemyer

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