"My debts are not like prison -- there's hope of getting free"

[larryhammer]

After reading 550-odd pages of later Browning, Asolando comes like a moist breeze in a desert afternoon. Not that he didn't write Good Stuff from The Inn Album on -- The Two Poets of Croisic stands out, as do a couple Dramatic Idylls -- but it was slogging through Ferishtah's Fancies and, especially, Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day: a wonderfully Browning title with dreadfully Victorian content.* His last dacade, Browning increasingly wrote in his own voice, rather than fictive personas, and the works suffered. Or to put it another way, I don't want to listen to him Pronounce upon Big Issues, I want to hear him tell stories with a variety of unreliable narrators.

Or so I thought. I'll also take a voice straitened into lyrics, mixed with short narratives, on themes of facts versus fancies.

Not sure what's next: possibly back to the Balaustion poems, or the couple volumes between, which I've never read.


* That said, the parley "With Gerard de Lairesse" is both playful and plays well with Asolando.

---L.