Bøker av David Chorlton

The poet David Chorlton begins The Long White Glove by retracing the steps of the same murderer who killed 13-year-old Brigitte Besztenlerer, whose death his cousin was convicted of. A gripping true crime family saga, beginning in 1958 Vienna, a city still troubled by its Nazi era and post-war years of deprivation. After a suspect commits suicide, authorities find Gerhard Eder. Coached into making a false confession, we see Gerhard relentlessly interrogated. Chorlton brilliantly manages the twinned narratives of his search for the true murderer and a family haunted by Gerhard, survivor of an unhappy boyhood, left to face the powers of the State alone. And in contrast to the lawyerly vernacular of the courtroom, Gerhard attempts to recant his confession using his working-class idiom: "I don't know 'ow the crime was done. I made it all up." "I dunno. I didn't do it." The author consummately captures this unequal linguistic duel where words carry inordinate weight. An intense, spellbinding book that captivates the reader like Vienna, the mood-drenched city, where it will always be raining in the park when the young victim drops her long white glove.

In his twelfth full-length poetry collection, popular elder poet David Chorlton presents us with thirty-one new poems that reflect the natural and human aspects of the world in a birds eye. His keen observational sensitivities are everywhere apparent in these poems. In imagery gleaned primarily from the Southwestern region, Chorlton presents us with a naturalistic morality. Although his diction leans to the lean-side, his sense of musicality is sonorous and melodic. Chorlton was born in England and traveled extensively throughout Northern Europe in his youth. Marriage brought him to Arizona, where he has embraced the wildlife, geography and people of that region. A subtle level of social criticism winds its way through these poems. Chorlton often juxtapositions natural images with cultural images. The symbol of a bird on a wire aptly represents his poetic persona, which is in the vein of a Gary Snyder or W S Merwin.