“ Brian Campbell’s Passenger Flight is a collection of prose poems about very contemporary concerns: the depiction of women in advertising, big-city life, sex tourism, high blood pressure and global commerce. One poem, Pastorale, uses language from postings at an abandoned missile site in California.
Other pieces tackle the current relevance of poetry. A poem called Edmonton notes that ‘Poetry is compared to the filling of potholes here and found wanting.’ Fishy suggests a novel use for ground-up poetry manuscripts.
On the other hand, Nota Bene concerns that old standby, sex. Meanwhile, the ghost of Charles Baudelaire whispers in some of the poems: the French master also wrote about sex and the city, so maybe these concerns are universal.
Campbell finds beauty in chaos and the eternal in the seemingly transient. ”
—Uptown Magazine
Brian Campbell 