‘Five Scenes from Six and Renaldo’
— Reneé Bibby
Open the door to Renaldo, the avuncular hero of Linda Phillimore’s prose poem. Tip over into the thrumming stream of a single night, a wonderous, magical family moment for Renaldo. Renaldo whirls into town on his way to somewhere else (always on his way to somewhere else), stopping long enough to unleash his voluble, positive energy on the family that adores him despite (because of) his faults.
Eschewing punctuation, Phillimore creates a sense of breathlessness, a frenetic energy packed into compressed, orderly stanzas that reflect the experience of being near Renaldo for a short amount of time. There are hints of an underlying darkness. How Renaldo is a man whose passion may outweigh his sense, whose love may often be misplaced; a man who is best served in small portions. For a night (for the length of a poem) he is wonderful, fun, and exactly what’s needed to shake us up.