Neil Aitken is a true visionary poet. His instincts for the craft of poetry, its assemblage as verbal object, its locations in time and context, are startling. He is the kind of writer who makes readers want to read and poets remember why they write. He makes poetry feel young, as though the last three thousand years have passed as a single decade and there are still libraries of wonder to be written. Mr. Aitken is filling their shelves as we watch with our hands to our mouths, our cups of tea forgotten.
Neil Aitken is a well-read man, versed in various traditions, a researcher of dream, memory, history and the multidimensional layers of language. His poems are doubled-forests, like Magritte or early Taoist landscape paintings; You journey outside in one direction admiring the foliage, the arrangements of shadow and landscape, then suddenly, you fall inside into voracious vortices of light, fire, voice, and wisdom—the kind that shimmers behind the words. His breadth is vast and his depth is a tremulous chakra opening, burning quietly, even deliciously in your heart.