"Bear" by Chrissy Williams (Bloodaxe, 2017)

14 of the 20 poems in her pamphlet Flying into the Bear reappear in this 36-poem book.

I like "Sheep" and "Digital Ghost Towns". What drew me into "Reading your comics in Eype" was that there were parts I understood (and liked), and other parts whose meaning I knew I could look up. Firstly, is there a stable (perhaps imagined) world behind this poem? There is indeed a place in Dorset called Eype, and it has a beach. The events of the poem could easily belong to a single narrative without needing to change their order. There's a fixed viewpoint. In the title it says "your comics". Readers soon realise that "you" refers to the owner of the comics, though later it seems that "you" is the comic's author too. Perhaps 2 different people are being referred to, perhaps not. The poet's written up some thoughts about poetry and comics on the Rialto site, saying that her partner "writes (but does not draw) comics". Ah. Lines 3-4 refer to the comic -

You'd nudged it towards my rucksack with a grin when I was trying to pack my bedroll up at midnight

What's the significance of the timing? I don't know, though Jesus said to Lazarus, "Get up, take your bedroll, start walking". If the comic is thought of as a message, a nudged hint, we need to know about the comic characters. I had to look up the names. Juggernaut is a Marvel Comics supervillain, a bit like The Hulk. Hope is a female superhero, "the first mutant to be born after the Decimation, an event in which the Scarlet Witch uses her reality-altering superpower to turn all but 198 of the world's mutants into regular, depowered humans. Hope Summers is an omega-level mutant with an ability of unspecified limits to manipulate and mimic the genes which are responsible for superhuman mutation". Juggernaut is unstoppable, exaggeratedly Male. Hope is an empathetic Female.

The persona, seeing dogs on the shore below ("the fisherman's line is being bothered by a mixed troupe of dogs") starts thinking about them - "is it just me who drags dogs into everything?", further encouraging the identification of the persona and poet. Perhaps "drags dogs into everything" is supposed to bring to mind "drags God into everything". The persona recalls how Superman's dog missed him when he went away. Is it this aspect of dogs that the persona drags in?

Dogs lead to Cats, then Children. After "[Superman] didn't want kids" there's a sudden switch - the persona changes the subject, feels cold, thinks "not yet, not yet" then there's

Please dogs, there's so much sea to write. Today, I just want to listen to it.

Given that these lines end the poem, I think we're entitled to read much into them. Why plead with the dogs? The persona is "in an armchair", the "fisherman sits tending his line" - i.e. they're both sitting, both thinking about lines. The fisherman (symbol of Christ, of hope - the poet's half Italian, so may be familiar with catholic symbolism) is disturbed by a "mixed troupe of dogs" (a Juggernaut is a wagon carrying statues of Hindu gods. Note also that the poem's first line is "I see Juggernaut's foot stamp down on San Francisco" - St Francis liked animals). Why "troupe" rather than "pack"? I don't know. The dogs are stopping a catch - "fisherman tending lines - fish - sea" corresponds to "poet tending lines - words - world". But the dogs' noise is also disturbing a more direct contemplation of the world by the poet.

In the Rialto article one of the lessons deduced from the comic world is that "economy of line is paramount ... Comics are at their most successful when the maximum effect is produced by every line and unnecessary lines are eliminated". This poem seems to follow that guideline. I've needed to mention just about all its details, except for the mysterious purple light.

I don't get "Menagerie Speeches (3 pages). "Moorhens" shows signs of promise then loses patience, ending with "But riverbanks know no sausages/ and you will not suffer this derangement./ That's the way to do it. Breathe. Scream./ Stray feathers drift along the surface./ The water floods black with your joy". "Tin Can Odyssey" and "Go" seem weak to me.

"The Invisible Bear" looks interesting, in the teasing way that "Reading your comics in Eype" interested me, beginning with "We went into the dome in daylight./ Lights out for a fake night in darkness". Why "in darkness"? I don't know, but I assume it's a planetarium. There are "stars spread out against the tile", which I don't understand. Then "We fly into the stars ... Now we're flying into the bear ... But this bear is invisible ... All I can do is tell you that your bear is here.". I don't get "Our planet, back with a fox, is so small". Then there's some repetition. It's time to get back to reality. The ending is "One step at a time is how we have to go. Out of the dome, the doors are opened. You might say they have been flung open without ceremony. But stop. Bear. Be dazzled by the daylight."

My problem in general is that I don't like her style when she veers from the mainstream. Other people may find well value in it. Is "The art of editing" worth the effort? "Bedroom filled with foam" is lost on me. The texts in that section (showing Lydia Davis' influence?) aren't worth a page each, even if they're worth publishing. "Sonnet for Zookeeper" is the kind of experiment that should never have left the lab.

She employs repetition in various ways. Using letters to represent phrases, a section on p.12 has the structure "A AB ABC₁ ABC₂ ABC₁ ABC₂ A A" like a ritualistic Eliot. "Bird Talk" uses "cat" 15 times in 16 lines. "Murder, She Wrote" uses "Angela" 24 times. A section of "Gone" reads "I acknowledge the gift of language which has been given to me.// I acknowledge the skill of language which has been gifted to me,// the language with which I can uncover truth". So? What should we make of a voice prepared to state this?

Other reviews

• Lucy Winrow (Many poems explore the theme of love with what feels like untempered expression; the tone is typically conversational, playfully drawing on in-jokes without elucidating matters for outsiders)