Pretty

Ahren Warner''s second collection of poems opens with the sequence Lutèce, te amo: a raw paean to the Paris it inhabits that flits between past and present and offers both adoration and horror in equal measure. Elsewhere, London ''licks and laps''; an anonymous man ''works his bones with a micro-plane'' and translations of Baudelaire and Kojève rub shoulders with Kurt Cobain and ''Little Lord Tory-Tit''. More capricious, fleshly and darker than Warner''s previous work, Pretty culminates in Nervometer: thirteen poems hovering between a collage, translation and performance of Antonin Artaud''s Le Pèse-nerfs, which bring Pretty to a beautifully ugly end. Poetry Book Society Recommendation.