One day in April : an Irish lullaby : a romantic reflection on Old Route 66 / Buy your copy! Amazon Amazon.co.uk Froogle Barnes & Noble.com BOOKS BY DAVID WILDE (2008)

WILDE WORLD
One Day in April: an Irish Lullaby. A Romantic Reflection on old Route 66.
ALIBI NEW MEXICO alt.press
Wilde World
David Wilde's One Day in April
By Kane S. Latranz

To the extent that this "romantic reflection on Old Route 66" concerns itself with a storyline, it involves a writer from Wales walking along Central Avenue when he happens across a motorist and "fellow expatriate," a young girl from Surrey, England, of all places. To be honest, at first I felt uncertain whether I would read all of One Day in April, but something about it was hypnotic and addictive. My initial problem was that this book does not concern itself terribly with a plot, or with much in the way of playing different characters off each other; I cannot recall chancing across one set of quotation marks in the entire thing. It is, to be sure, a nonlinear, ruminative, fanciful speculation about the human condition and New Mexico, about writing and surviving, from the perspective of a stranger in a strange land. While at first I felt somewhat aggravated with it, feeling its approach was undisciplined, with all due respect, I could say the same about writers like William S. Burroughs.

It all broke through for me when, business being slow with the cab company I work for, I decided to park at Tingley Beach. The first thrill of blessed autumn in the air, I enjoyed some relief from the searing Albuquerque sun under a thick ceiling of clouds. As I became engrossed in Wilde's description of winter, which seemed to blur the qualities of that season in New Mexico with winter in his homeland in the United Kingdom, there was, synchronistically enough, a burst of rain like some sign from a merciful God. (The air conditioning in the cab I drive isn't the best, which can make for some long summers!)
Then I remembered how New Mexico had seemed when I first arrived here in the same year as Mr. Wilde himself, 1983. Back before basic survival had seemed to be such an issue, when I was more idealistic and spent so much of my time in the Bosque by the river, concerned, as only the young, and David Wilde, seem to properly be able to be, with a romantic and fanciful appreciation for poetry and some belief in magic, in the wilderness and the "voice of the land itself."

There were a few things that detracted from this book for me, but, to Mr. Wilde's credit, I enjoyed it nonetheless. He reminded me of what it is about New Mexico that draws so many here. Those intangible qualities, like One Day in April itself, cannot be precisely encapsulated by the many artists who lend themselves to that very purpose. But at its best, as poetry, this book comes very close to that ultimately unattainable thing. And now if you'll excuse me, I need to spend some time by the river.