In The Bloods, his third poetry collection, D.S. Marriott's recurrent theme is that of memory and absence: 'bound to what is remembered/ what is absent'. In poems that both embody and inhabit this double obligation, memory and absence prove to be equally central to the mysteries of ordinary language, the politics and philosophy of enslavement, as well as markers-typographic, archival, ethical-respecting the borders of what cannot, finally, be known. Spare, lyrical, and deeply haunting, and yet not without irony or hope, The Bloods continues Marriott's pursuit of a style and concept of the poem that is strictly his own.
