Customer Reviews
A Soho lunch date - By: Eleanor, 20 Jul 2010 
"The Song of Lunch" is a narrative poem following a middle-aged publisher as he has lunchin a fondly-remembered Italian restaurantin Soho with a former lover.
The excitement of the opening, with the publisher's sense of freedom & excitement at the lunch date, is gradually replaced with disillusionment, regret, & unpleasant truths.
"The Song of Lunch" is readable & entertaining, bothin terms of its story & its language. The awkward conversation between the lovers is horribly real, & as the poem progresses more & more is revealed about the main protaganist, so that one feels one knows him to an uncomfortable extent.
All the details of the restaurant & Soho are carefully rendered, for examplein the following description of its former waiting staff:
Massimo's pirate crew,
as he privately thought of them;
some of whose names he knew
while knowing nothing of their lives
beyond the act -
grave, flirtatious,
resentful, brisk, droll -
each brought to the table.
Reid also has a beautiful & striking way of describing even ordinary things, such as the concept of travelling on the eyein the following lines, when the publisher's mind starts to wanderin the restaurant:
From that thought idly
on a ride of the eye
around the room -
the bustle, the hubbub -
he travels to the next.
The poem doesn't have a rigid rhyme scheme, instead it relies on half rhymes which create a pleasing effect, catching the reader by surprise & making them linger on certain lines.
This is a work I can imagine reading again & again, savouring the descriptions, & shuddering at the pathos (and bathos). From the exhilaration of the opening lines to the shocking final word, this poem is a triumph.
Finally the publisher, CB editions, has produced a beautiful volume, a matt brown paperback with mustard endpapers.
