Facing West

"Facing West achieves true illuminations of the places and uses of myth. Corcoran's lines balance impressively between sometimes cryptic, aphoristic phrases and an orality encountered in song -and in great poetry. Several poems are almost like screens with a critical or philosophical text behind them; and the verse emerges stranger, and stronger, for the incidents in other books it points us to... The overall edifice in Facing West allows entrances by prose passages -often, apparently, autobiographical; also talismanic insertions from other tongues, sometimes acronyms and street names. Yet, these often fragmentary structures develop as an experiment in narrative across separate sections, they work as a book. And in the end, nothing feels out of place." (Paschalis Nikolaou)