Poems from Alchemy Spoon, Butcher's Dog, Poetry Wales, Under the Radar, etc. At the launch on 26th May, Jane Commane suggested that some themes were - finding where the damage is; how stories shape us; how trauma is passed down. Julia suggested another theme - that of water, saying that in dream it represents emotion. There's the horror of flooding, of domestic space invaded by water. She started the reading with the book's first poem, "Crash Site", the mother as a crashed plane - "we never did find that black box" - and ended with the book's last poem, a reconstruction of the mother from things around the house, magicked into life by chanting her name (perhaps an analogy to how the words of this book summoned a living mother character).
The book has fewer myth/fairy-tale elements than "Bird Sisters" had, and less about Thetford and growing up than "Threat" had. It's replete with family characters - mother and father get at least half a dozen poems each. Grandparents, sisters, ex and children also feature. They're rarely alone - interaction between "I" and these characters is the norm. Consequently it's rather hard to review the book without indulging in character analysis. I'll assume that all references to "mother" in the book refer to the same person (ditto "father", etc). I'll assume that the "I" person is the same in all the poems, though I won't assume that it's the author. Sometimes the supporting cast interact - mother and sister in the same poem, or mother and father, so it useful to read the poems in context.
When the "I" is the focus in this book, it tends to be transformed (into a picnic rug, mermaid, comet, concrete, bear, lobster, broken-down van) or fragmented (e.g "Selves (non existent)") - not so much to escape, to be someone/something else, but to be able to see others differently, the other often mutating too - e.g. "When she was a field/ I ran through her ... When she was a road/ I parked myself ... When she was a train" (p.16). In other poems mother's a bramble, father is a rhinoceros, a parrot, a budget supermarket, a pine tree. These transformations can backfire though - "I was a bomb and he was a fuse - and she lit it" (p.34).
The symbolism and focus on relationships come at a cost. The characters don't learn about each other by sharing activities. There aren't crowds or landscapes. People don't go for a swim or a ramble. In fact, they barely move, barely have a location. They don't have a sense of belonging to a place. Travel might do them good, a chance to be at one with nature. Having a tea on an old Indian train offers some writers the new perspectives - here the character would become a teapot. When the external world appears, its objects become internalised, become psychological props. "Inside" is a common relation between 2 entities. Conceptually it can mean "absorb" or "conquer", though it can also lead to rather mixed spatial metaphors - e.g. there's " a hurricane inside me" then "I" becomes a storm shelter on p.46.
The text
The current tendency for all stanzas of a poem to have the same number of lines is present, though interestingly many poems are nearly regular - e.g. a few poems mix 4- and 5-line stanzas, or 6- and 7-line stanzas. A few pieces (p.38, p.67) have a prose layout. A few (p.31, p.35, p.68) use "/" instead of line-break. On p.23, p.43, p.57, p.61, p.63, p.69 there's some adumbration. I'm probably alone in thinking that removing all the repetition (especially on p.43 and p.57) would improve the poems. I think "Prayer for the Lack" uses spaces instead of commas, and line-breaks instead of full-stops. "The future died inside me" has no punctuation.
Role-play
I don't know much about transactional analysis. I suspect knowledge of it would help readers of this book. "Prayer for the Lack" mentions "the empty chair" - a standard therapy ploy.
I don't know much about drama/comedy ad-lib exercises either, but I've seen people pair up and perform scenes where they were objects (those objects sometimes unknown to the audience). I know objects are used in therapy. I read that "Rojas-Bermudez’s (1997) specific use of intermediate objects relates to the use of an object to symbolize the therapist when a client cannot tolerate the vulnerability of direct human interaction. Instead of the dialog taking place between therapist–client, it takes place between object–client to reduce intensity and decrease activation or alarm." (Essentials of Psychodrama Practice - Scott Giacomucci). Role reversal is sometimes used so that participants can see situations from both points of view (see "The Hunt"). The biggest pay-offs (key insights) often happen early. In comedy ad-lib the chairperson hits a buzzer for the participants to go on to the next pair of roles once returns diminish. In this book (e.g. p.16) there's a stanza-break instead of a buzzer.
Psychologists suggest using role-play to explore the past, to learn and undergo cathersis, then return and integrate the knowledge into the current self. This final phase - of analysis, change and looking ahead, renewed - is denied us in many of these poems. Such endings would give the poems a more standard shape though - thesis-antithesis-synthesis or anecdote-reflection-conclusion - and perhaps result in a less interesting collection. There are few comforting endings: last lines include -
- to keep the darkness dark
- you can't always find what you need
- you woke up black and blue
- here is the staircase down which she fell
- so that I could be the one to cry; but secretly they hoped I would fall
- and in that moment darkness fell
The hopeful endings are perhaps revealing -
- "and my little fish taught himself to swim" shows that water isn't always bad
- "we threw open the doors and cheered"; "trying to see each other in the dark"; "and is finally flowering"; "and lights up her face"" oppose the prevalent darkness and inwardness
When a son in "Giving Thanks" talks about the future, the persona is happy!
Communication
It's a key theme, emphasised by the poems often involving two entities -
- "the distance between us/ became whole galaxies, oceans even - garbled as if speaking underwater" (p.12)
- "miles between us" (p.13)
- "the distance between us so big" (p.15)
- "I reached for his words but couldn't pin them down" (p.27)
- "the gaps are bigger than the words either side" (p.40)
- "There was nothing left between us to say" (p.41)
Water and especially flooding (i.e. emotion) seems to hamper communication -
- "her lake was so wide/ we couldn't see to the other side of each other/ we broke ourselves on each other's shore" (p.15)
- "the future was a glacier that melted flooding the house" (p.20)
- "we could hear our parents downstairs (neither of them swimmers) struggling to keep their heads above water" (p.32)
- "no one could stop my river bursting its banks ... when the flood warnings sounds I didn't hear them" (p.46)
- "the river running between us/ was getting wider, overrunning its banks" (p.54)
Miscellaneous
- "The Telling" - Throughout the book, physical proximity doesn't guarantee empathy or communcation. Instead it may provoke silence or diversionary role-play. In this poem emotions are shared. Significantly, it's done distantly, by phone. A "telling" is where a fortune teller reveals the future. I'm a bit confused by the details - the mother is on the phone, the narrator is on the phone, the father (behind the narrator?) is urging "you tell her", then the narrator picks up the phone. The last line's good though.
- "Daddish" - the middle section is entitled "I want my father to be an owl". In her previous book "Bird Sister" I think mother and sisters became owls.
- I don't get "Rules of the Liar Family"
- I like the simple ending of "When I was made of concrete"
- I don't know why "Duplex" has that title. Is the first stanza needed?
- "remaking mother" - it's interesting that the materials seem to have no sentimental value. The previous poem mentioned decluttering, which is what this poem might be describing. It sounds most like a school project. "I sing her name out" here contrasts with "she made a prayer of my name" in "Prayer for the Lack"
Quite often when I've read a poetry book I feel it should have been a pamphlet. This book however earns its pages - it doesn't sag in the 3rd quarter like many books do. My favourites are "Crash Site", "girl was born", "That year there was a hurricane inside me", "we had nothing but love for the bird he had become", "That day I was a picnic rug". I wasn't so keen on "The Telling", "Comet and Moon", "I don't believe in death", "The hunt".
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