Frank Golden’s If You Tolerate This is a wide-ranging work in six parts which nails its geo-political colours to the mast, and casts a misanthropic eye over the whole morass.
The book opens in the company of Nick and his girlfriend Inga as they travel up the Tapajós River to the failed capitalist venture of Fordlandia.
Failure and the blighted realities of both entitled and marginalised lives suffuse sections of the book. Poems concerned with political and eco dynamics not only dominate section 5 but inform the book as a whole.
If You Tolerate This ends with a groups of ghazals that Golden wrote having back-packed through Iran in 2019. This is a book with a large cast of characters, both familiar and new, who are as riven and corruptive as the age we live in.