Reminded of Something

Poems are like rooms. One might feel safe in such a room and, at first sight, the poems of Robin Thomas employ an architecture which is reassuring. […] Yet walls shake and windows crack and the ‘homely’ formal qualities of these well-made poems belie a mystery, a strangeness, a reckoning. — Julian Stannard;Robin Thomas’s is a fragile world, whose unexpected strengths derive from his elastic, unsentimental grasp of reality. It’s not surprising that I find myself smiling with recognition as I read Robin Thomas’ view of the universe … after all, ambiguity and contradiction are embedded in comedy of the most serious kind. — Janice Dempsey;Occasionally I seize upon a single poem sent to me, or discovered by accident, and rejoice in its particular oddness or specialness or combination of the two. Robin Thomas's poetry evokes this response with its extraordinary quirkiness, quaint combination of wild and everyday wisdom, the way the clues are always in the margins, chuckling as they wait to be found or found out. Thomas is the master of irony and juxtaposition, never obvious, always surprising. — Wendy Klein