58th Parallel

58th Parallel is an odyssey sequence of response poems about the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. The poems are exotic portraits of a place that has transcended its chequered colonial past to become one of the world's most exclusive package deal holiday paradises. But there is a strange shadow-play at work in the weather cycles of the day and night. It is within this mysterious diurnal interconnectivity that the collection resides. Hughes' simmering and astonished gaze sees 'like children of wonder do at stopped clockwork toys'. The horizon is a striking symbolic warning of will itself, and the poems are X-rays full of immeasurable light and dark. In fact, the writing is a pellucid testament looking in to see if beauty can exist when surrounded by such an illusory atmosphere. In this collection, Hughes is on a quest, and the language is what 'the sand is to the sky, as the night is to day.' Words are 'stashed like shells' and he wants the reader to feel them between their toes or hold them up to their ears. 'here amongst the zoo of animal eyes, that fear gathered at night amongst the glaze of moon and the glaring sun's shadow, is the infinity source, the adrenalin at the beginning of the hunt.' How This Light Is Soaring in the Blood