The title poem of this collection looks at the linguistic initiation rites of soldiers. "One didn't know the name of Tarzan's monkey," it begins. Yet two verses later: "The morning of the first snowfall, I was shaving. Staring into a mirror nailed to a tree. Intoning the Christian names of the Andrews Sisters. 'Maxine, Laverne, Patty.'" The other entries are similarly inventive. Shibboleth won England's Whitbread Prize in 1989.
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