The cover has a heart with gearwheels (maybe an escapement) inside.
"The Course" first presents an analogy - nerve damage is like a path being beaten through long grass to a river, and pain following that path. This analogy's put in the mouth of a doctor (to give it credibility? to humanize it?). Then love replaces the pain. The pieces in place, the poetry starts
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The love was real. The love was not. The love was love you didn't want. The love is yours. You have to walk. |
At the end
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I walk the only path I know, where all I love will be taken from me, ... even this track of beaten grass where I walk and bear the mark of love. |
There are a few sonnets, but the dominant style is a two-pager where line-breaks don't matter, and sound plus concision are sacrificed to maximise the chances of being understood. I find many of these poems about a third too long, interesting though many of them are. Poems like "The Track in the Snow" and "The Longing Machine" are built around good ideas so a few extra lines don't matter. "House and Garden" has much less to fall back on.
Especially towards the end, the independence of mind and body becomes a major theme. Another theme is late realisation of the meaning of an event/dream. These two themes come together in "Dream", where it takes 25+ lines to describe being ceremonially burnt to death. At the end,
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I couldn't have said what the dream meant then; but now, but now I've lived two decades more in the world and at last I am beginning to know. |
Other reviews
- Sue Butler (Sphinx)
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