This issue contains a select group of poems with a wide range of
subject-matterand styles, from the exotic narratives of Carol Bergman to
Manav Masoon’s spiritual poetry.
We continue with our avowed aim of reviewing poetry books that are inexpensive (either pamphlets or discounted books), with three collections that cost less than £4.
Please feel free to comment by using the buttons on the navigation bar to the left.
Contents
Poems
1 - Thomas Reynolds ………….Aerial View
2 - Thomas Reynolds ………….Junior Archaeologist
3 - Ian Brand ……………….....Wood Dreams
4 - Carol Bergman …………….Occupied
5 - Carol Bergman ……………..In Transit
6 - Manav Maasoom …………..Word Weave
7 - Manav Maasoom …………..Poem XCVIII
8 - Brian Braun ………………...On a Fly Leaf
Reviews
9 - Tony Harrison - Under the Clock
11 - Nick Laird - To a Fault
12 - Various Poets - Six of One (and half a dozen of the other)
14 - Andy Brown - The TrustTerritory
15 - Notes on Contributors
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Poems
Aerial View
When the salesman
delivered an aerial view
of our five-acre plot
taken from a single-engine plane-
barns, sheds, house, and pasture-
unrolling it onto the table
like a sacred parchment
(though one for $35.75),
our world appeared flat and fitted,
meticulously organized
like puzzle pieces,
the pasture's looping slope
fitted into the neighbour’s drive,
the line of hedge trees following
a straight edge that knifed on
and on, all the way to Oscaloosa.
"It really gives you a perspective,
doesn't it," he declared over coffee.
Just this once,
don't put it all into perspective.
Leave the edges grey and fuzzy,
even if the centre is clear.
Let the horse pasture ebb on and on
down to the sea. May the neighbours,
good people though they be,
disappear into the hedge
to become gnats and squirrels.
Roll up the picture
like a pair of dried wings.
- Thomas Reynolds
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Junior Archaeologist
The southeast corner of our field
at the summit of the rock bluff
and near Bull Creek's original course,
once served as a Kansas encampment
I learned when I was twelve.
I'd wandered those rocky slopes
for hours during summers and after school,
collecting stones in the washed-out gullies,
as distant from people, even conversation,
as buried ash from a centuries-old camp.
Sometimes I felt as if covered by sediment,
yet another layer of sand and mud
deposited daily to impede discovery.
A thick tome, The Principles of Archaeology,
cemented the connection I already felt,
and so I plotted out a twenty-foot grid
where I discovered just one artefact,
a flint point with a swirl of red streaks,
its tip as dull and broken off
as my perception of who I was,
inhabiting those forgotten pathways
like a rough-hewn axe blade or scraper
its creator had discarded,
edges crudely chipped away
above a small pile of shavings.
- Thomas Reynolds
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Wood Dreams
A few moths tumble
from the tuxedo--
spontaneous
confetti.
One flits around
inside the cello
before a single voicing creeps from the sound hole
before the wood dreams
of its treehood
and thinks its longing out loud.
- Ian Brand
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Occupied
The room is cluttered when she arrives, and there is a vinegary
smell. A natural cure for cockroaches, she heard someone say. Pour vinegar into
the cracks, let it evaporate at its own speed. Is she evaporating?
She takes off her gortex jacket, folds it neatly, and places it
mindfully on the bed. Grey army issue wool blanket. She’s noting all the
details. Her mind is occupied.
How long will I stay? Where are my books? Where are my clothes?
If only she could ask these questions. If only someone could
answer them. But the door is shut, she is utterly alone, and the corridor is
silent. The room is illuminated by one light bulb hanging on a wire.
I am empty handed.I have no belongings.
This is where her thoughts stop. She sits on the bed next to her
jacket.
The past is baggage enough, if only I could make use of it.
She walks to the window and contemplates the vista. Mountains in
the distance, fields touching the brick wall, shacks and barns. All in the
present tense. Dogs, horses, ploughs, a well in the centre of the village.
- Carol Bergman
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In Transit
The railroad station was a hut in the middle of a forest, a
fortress, a way-station, as capacious as a barn, unheated, soiled. The floor was
compressed sand, sifted and layered, like the silt at the bottom of the river,
moist and dense with cadavers and ash.
A man and a woman sat on a bench in the station and waited for
the train which would take them on the next phase of their journey. They had
been walking for days, eating berries and ferns. The ferns were bitter and
caught in their throat. The man spat. The woman choked and heaved. They had sent their children ahead.
They were hungry. The woman wanted an apple. She had been
dreaming of an apple. She was embarrassed by her hunger. Her hair was blonde and her face wide. A friendly and open face, a smile without teeth from the months they had been on the road sleeping in shacks, scrounging for food, like wolves.
The air was fetid and still. A desert in the midst of the forest.
Their children would be returned to them, or not returned to them. Who was
responsible? Who would know their fate?
A vendor appeared at the station with a cornucopia of fruits:
pears and apples, primarily, temptation and hope. And with the scent of ripening
flesh, the woman’s appetite returned. She asked for the green apple, and
thought of her children sleeping under a duvet on the other side of the world,
and bit into the apple.
In ordinary times, it should not be difficult to locate a source
of sustenance, a zone of safety, one’s children, a train.
- Carol Bergman
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Word Weave (from The Sufi's Garland)
(Performed at Salaam Theatre, Manhattan, Winter 2003)
Shabad Shradanjali to Tagore's Gitanjali*
And sitting among the shoes and sheets and shards and sheer, when I learned that the mind of man too is a solo act, a solo uncontainable act, I lost my fears of losing, of losing my mind…and thought freely
And peering at the mosque, the mandir, the church, the shrine, when I learned that they are all homes of God, are all homes of God and not of the priest inside, I lost my fears, my fears of not knowing, of not knowing how to pray…and entered freely
And when I learned that feelings of worth, that feelings of worth have more to do with works of respect, creating works of respect than working for respect, then I lost my fears, my fears of retiring unknown …and strove freely
And when I learned that becoming we means not losing that little, that little bit of me, then I lost my fears, my fears of you, my fears of you becoming we…and wed freely
And trying to save all in need when I learned that I could not save those, those who never needed to be saved, I lost my fears, my fears of not being, of not being able to save, save enough for myself, save myself…and served freely
And when I learned that giving is not for displaying strength, displaying strength or flashes of character, then I lost my fears, my fears of being, of being misunderstood…and gave freely
And when I learned that acts of good need not become tokens, tokens that encash, as good feelings in return, then I lost my fears, my fears of not being, of not being thanked enough …and helped freely
And surrendering kindness, when I learned that kindness is not to be done to ensure kindness in return, then I lost my fears, my fears of being, of being in their shoes some day…and shared freely
And when I learned that acts of fear, that acts of fear reveal more of the feared, reveal more of the feared than of the fearful, then I lost my fear of being, of being afraid…and feared freely
And when I learned that being true must not be a way to ensure they speak good of you when you are gone, then I lost my fears, my fears of not being, of not being able to buy their worthy words …and spoke freely
And dissolving myself, when I learned that giving one's self, in the karmic awareness that good will come upon you now or later by the laws of nature, is nobly selfish, then I lost my fears, my fears of not being, of not being selfless enough…and rendered freely
Then found for me a love, a love so great I could not contain. But when I learned that containment and betrothal are signs not of love but of life thereafter, then I lost my fears, my fears of losing, of losing my love…and loved freely.
*A word weave inspired by Rabindranath Tagore's 1913 Nobel Prize book of songs Gitanjali
- Manav Maasoom
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Poem XCVIII (from The Sufi's Garland)
this is a story of a time when, easily, we could have, among the stench become stench ourselves;
our roots, stymied, sullied, so easily, we could have, among the soot become soot ourselves;
our streams adrift, heavily begrimed, so easily, we could have, among the locusts become locusts ourselves;
our dreary feet silting, sinking, so easily, we could have, among the swamp become swamp ourselves;
our squeezed hearts charred, weary, so easily, we could have among the ravens become ravens ourselves;
yet fire we became, light and rising, so easily, we could have among the quicksand become quicksand ourselves;
yet engines we became, whistling locomotive, so easily, we could have among the fuel become fuel ourselves;
yet lotuses we became, bursting blossoms, so easily, we could have among the forgotten become forgotten ourselves
- Manav Maasoom
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On a Fly-Leaf
‘Don’t be so clever,’ she said to me,
as she flung aside the tome
with the translations from Corbiere,
or was it a Short History of the Gael?
It landed there
with a belly-flop.
When I opened it later
I found a diaphanous letter-
sized wing
that must have lost its better
half amid our rowing,
pressed in the covers of, yes, Les Amours Jaune.
When I sneezed, the wing fluttered, dumb,
disjointed, ever so lightly,
on to her gloss-painted, ever so slightly
ingrown toenail.
- Brian Braun
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Reviews
Under the Clock
Tony Harrison
Penguin Books Ltd (May, 2005)
64 pages, £1.50
ISBN 0141022736
The best of Tony Harrison’s poems often meld the personal and the political. In many ways he is the embodiment of the passionately committed poet. His is perhaps best known for the long poem, ‘V’, from 1985, which was a tirade against the vandalizing of graves in a cemetery in Leeds and the social conditions which led people to such actions.
Under the Clock was published for the grand price of £1.50, as part of the Penguin 70 series. Its title refers to the place in Leeds where Harrison’s parents used to meet and it leads to meditations on the passing of time and lost relations. He mentions three engravings on the building that might be said to sum up many of the concerns of the collection. The scythe, the hourglass and the wings represent death, the passing of time and the possibility of escape through art.
The repercussions of September 11th are never far from the surface of these poems. We begin with a satirical sequence, on the War in Iraq, ‘The Krieg Anthology,’ in which Harrison has Tony Blair say things like, ‘Why is it, Lord, although I’m right / I find it hard to sleep at night.’ This poem might remind readers of the songs of Spitting Image from the 1980’s, usually directed at a previous incumbent of Downing Street. There is no holding back in these poems. It all puts Harrison firmly in the Michael Moore camp. And that’s the dilemma at the heart of these poems: at what point do they become propaganda, and does that matter? Harrison firmly believes that poets should be engaged. There is no time for ivory tower posturing here.
You can easily imagine poets and other artists wondering how to come to terms with September 11th in their work. There is, in fact, a poem in this collection called ‘11 September 2001.’ It is, however, dedicated to his son. The poem concludes with a wish that his son, and by extension, all young people, do not become tempted by ‘bankrupt religions.’ The title also calls to mind Yeats’s ‘September 1913,’ another poem that meditates on the illusions of idealism that had ‘maddened every mother’s son.’ Yeats had a different take on it, though, seeking a return to what he called ‘romantic Ireland.’
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‘Queuing for Charon,’ takes up the theme of art’s place in a world of atrocities and genocide. Harrison, in Crete, meditates on the mix of Europeans in the resort, and meets German tourists in a museum. The exhibits are a reminder of mortality and
guilt: a painted dolphin in a tomb, the skulls of the long dead. The poem asks whether ‘art fails / when violence is rife / and doesn’t tip the scales / towards the claims of life?’
Whereas Auden claimed that ‘poetry makes nothing happen,’ Harrison goes further. Poets, he says, have ‘failed to give meaning / to all those ghosts of War.’ The painted dolphins may hint at immortality but the skull of Harrison’s imagined poet, with the coin in his cheek, is a sign that Charon has had to turn him away, the skiff full of voiceless victims. Poetry is now a ‘Stygian stowaway,’ barred from the hell of history, unable to make an adequate response. The German tourists go away with only the lesson of a carpé diem truism.
All this should be balanced by Harrison’s own attempts, especially at the beginning of the book, to vehemently respond to the Iraq war and the suffering it brought, as well as the attacks on the TwinTowers.
The collection ends with two long poems. In one, Harrison communes with Goethe’s ghost by Mount Vesuvius. The other, entitled, ‘Reading the Rolls: An Arse-Verse,’ is a light-hearted climax, in which much of the book’s tension is relieved with a lot of hot air and a poem written on toilet paper, to be read while defecating:
so, If you’re still sitting on the loo
where your ω fits in an O,
peruse these prosodics from my pen,
then use, and flush them down the pan.
Under the Clock is a lively collection from a poet who continues to fit a wide range of topics into his strict verse forms. Whether populist or classicist, satirist or propagandist, one thing’s for sure: Harrison’s work is rarely dull and often provocative and entertaining. Money well spent.
- Stephen Brown
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To a Fault Nick Laird
Faber (2005) 64pp, £8.99
ISBN 0571223826
It’s not often that a writer can advertise his imminent first novel in the back flap of his first collection of poetry. 2005 has certainly been a prolific time for Nick Laird. To a Fault, his first book of poetry, was followed by Utterly Monkey, a few months later, both receiving a lot of media attention.
The subject-matter of both books reflects Laird’s background, growing up in Northern Ireland and moving eventually to London. The first poem in Nick Laird’s debut collection takes the reader back to the author’s home in Northern Ireland, and more specifically, one of those old-style barber’s shops, the smell of pomade, the red leather chair, the ceramic sink. ‘Cuttings’ describes a place where men can meet on neutral terms in a country where everyone is forced to take sides. Here men exhibit a ‘closeness casual once in the trenches.’ Even that reference to World War One and later, to ‘the glories of Ulster’, remind us that it is a Protestant past that is being remembered here. It is also a reminder that, in Northern Ireland, there is always something to give away one’s background, one’s allegiance. The poem ends with a slightly nostalgic portrait of Laird’s father, tilted back on the chair, ‘angry and beautiful,’ waiting to be shaved.
You might be able to detect the very English influence of one of Laird’s poetic fathers in poems like ‘Aubade.’ Even the title of that poem calls to mind Philip Larkin, either Larkin’s poem of the same name, or ‘Talking in Bed.’ ‘Poetry’ sees Laird in a Larkinesque situation, ‘watching you, and her, and all of them / but through my own reflection.’
The poem ‘Disclaimer’ is only the most obvious example of a Larkinesque negativity that runs through the book. ‘No’s, ‘not’s and ‘not quite’s permeate these poems, giving them a knowing demeanour, but, as some critics have noted, also giving the book a derivative feel.
In spite of all this, there is plenty of wry humour in this book. ‘The Bearhug’, ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Joke,’ and ‘The Layered’ all point to the playfulness of someone like Paul Muldoon. Indeed it is, at times, as if Laird were doing Larkin crossed with Muldoon.
This is a collection by a poet who is still finding his own voice, and the poems at times seem to have what Mark Ford in the Guardian called a ‘manufactured accessibility.’ But it is an assured and promising debut. Laird is one to look out for in the future.
“Six of One (and half a dozen of the other)” is another example of the rich vein of talent being nurtured on Creative Writing courses at Universities across Britain. SheffieldUniversity recently published a series of pamphlets containing examples of students’ work, some of which were Poetry Book Society Choices. This new collection from Newcastle University brings together six poets to showcase their work.
My dictionary gives a definition of this book’s title as, ‘a situation of little real difference between the alternatives.’ But the great thing about this anthology is its heterogeneity. You might expect poets on the same course to produce similar work. W. N. Herbert’s introduction highlights the diversity of approaches in the book.
Pete Bainbridge homes in on fine details in his poems and adds a touch of the surreal, as in the book’s opener:
Put my fire in a locket,
I’d like you in silver
Like your smile in my wallet. (‘The Things You Are’)
His potential is clearly shown in his ‘Apology to a Piano’ in which the piano is cleverly personified:
We lift your frame and slide you
Creaking at the knees
Into a van…
Kyla Clay-Fox, in spite of her avowed childhood enthusiasm for Pam Ayres, creates haunting portrayals of lamented loved ones:
There was a strange woman in our house
With hair like wire and eyes like rings
Of wild black fire. (‘The Visit’)
The first real signs of experiment come with Lindsey Hall’s ‘Farrier’. The OED’s definition of ‘iron’ is woven in among her lines, creating a poem that remains in a sort of flux, that can be read in many different ways, depending on how the definition ‘fits in.’
Heart going to metal
strong, hard magnetic
hammering to robust
silver grey
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Jeff Price’s narratives betray his background in performance poetry, as in the poem ‘Nangle’ when he follows the journey of a surname to Ireland, then back to Durham to be used today as an Internet password, an ancient word, recycled, as poetry can often do for words: ‘You can give the kiss of life to old words / Puckered up and pouting they can be recycled.’
It is only when we get to Ally Robson’s section that we begin to see some of the playfulness of poetry emerge and, indeed, at times, taken to extremes. His opening statement is a list of 66 types of monkey. We find concrete poems, snippets of conversation, or bits of a lost poem and the influence of LANGUAGE poetry. This is poetry that is much more difficult to write about because its focus moves beyond language and, like ‘The dimensions of passion,’ overlaps into the visual arts.
Jule C. Wilson carries on this experiment in her poems. ‘The Diary’ is written on the pages of a dairy: ‘Blank days are black days / This page is one long sigh.’ ‘Simplicity’ is laid out on the page as a smile. ‘Becoming’ is in the shape of cross, and reminds the reader of George Herbert’s 17th century shaped verse.
But these poems and this anthology look to the future. The hope is that the poets here continue to explore the possibilities of poetry in their work and continue to develop their styles and achieve a body of work to each justify a full collection one day.
Andy Brown has been published in eight collections, beginning in 1996. This latest offering comes from Heaventree Press, based in Coventry. Jonathan Morley, the series editor, in his introduction points to Brown’s ‘immaculate formal patterning,’ and this is evident in the first poem in the book, ‘If I tell you…’ a kind of pantoum, in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza become the first and third lines of the next. It is a successful attempt at a difficult form.
This poem is part of an opening sequence from which the book takes its title. ‘The Trust Territory’ traces the intricate paths of an intense relationship, the little moments and the big leaps of faith along the way. ‘Koi Carp’ is an example of Brown’s keen observation, this time the details are redolent of a tranquil evening, when the fish are, ‘stirring the pool’s surprises.’ ‘Daybreak’ describes another intimate moment in sharp imagery: ‘Day breaks with the iridescence / of beetles. Last night remains // a beautiful, desolate thing.’
Gradually a pastoral strain emerges in this sequence and continues in the shorter poems that follow, such as ‘In Conversation’: ‘We have made friends with the trout / spawning in the late Spring melt of water.’ It is, at times, reminiscent of the early Yeats, an influence not altogether welcome when it produces lines that are reminiscent of late 19th / early 20th century poetry. But there is often a foreboding behind the rural mists in these poems. ‘Not I’ describes an apparition in a country church yard: ‘an apparition soon appeared before us, / hanging over the nearest grave in the shape of a mouth.’
The pastoral in this book is always at risk of being charged with escapism or archaism, but Andy Brown’s clear phrasing, his line-making, is what saves the poems and has you going back to them again and again.
your feet
dipped in a stream of fish
and frogs, your head among
a cloud of flies, crying;
tears that gleam like acorns.
- George Stevens
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Notes on Contributors
Carol Bergman teaches writing at New YorkUniversity. She is the editor and compiler of Another Day in Paradise: Frontline Stories from International Aid Workers, Earthscan, 2003.Her essays and interviews have appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, The Daily News, The Amsterdam News. Her creative nonfiction and literary fiction has appeared in Aim, Willow Review, The Bridge, and other literary journals in the US and the UK.
Ian Brand’s poems have appeared in various periodicals including Nthposition, The Manhattan Review, American Literary Review, and ThirdCoast. He holds an MFA in Creative writing from VermontCollege and works at Labyrinth Books (an independent book store) in New York City.
Brian Braun lives in Ayr, Scotland. His favourite writers are Flann O’Brien and Paul Muldoon.
Stephen Brown teaches at a school near Oxford, England. He has published one novel, Under the Devil Tree, available at Pabd.com.
Marion Lewis lives in Pembrokeshire. Her favourite poets are Edward Thomas, R S Thomas and Gillian Clarke.
Manav Sachdeva Maasoom was born in India. He studied Poetry and Policy Studies as a Master's student at SIPA, ColumbiaUniversity. He reads and writes poetry in English, Urdu, Punjabi, and Persian.
Thomas Reynolds teaches at JohnsonCountyCommunity College in Overland Park, Kansas. He has published poems in various print and online journals, including New Delta Review, Alabama Literary Review, Aethlon-The Journal of Sport Literature.
