"Holding pattern" by Carol Rumens (Blackstaff Press, 1988)

New poems from New Yorker, Poetry Review, TLS etc, plus Ireland-related poems reprinted from "Thinking of Skins" and "Best China Sky".

I expected to like it more, because I like what she says about poetry. I was more confused than I expected to be. Maybe I need to read the book again, or see her writings about her own work. Here's the first of the 3 stanzas in "Head cold"

River-mouth world, is it really a surprise That a new tenant has judged your sinuses An ideal home? Your breath aches through his coal smoke - Smell of the ancient tenderness of cities - His fumey speeds sicken you like catarrh.

I think this is comparing a city to a person with a cold, but why begin with "River-mouth world" (mouth/nose = estuary, but why world?). Some of the other phrases puzzle me too.

I like these lines -

• "Windows are often loneliest when lighted,/ Their silvery plenitude a kind of treason" (p.20)
• "burnt-out december trees" (p.21)
• "Windows that shine as women groom young men/ To be poets of death: my dark windows: my pen/ In the same place under the bed where it rolled/ Three weeks ago" (p.44)

The following seems initially too bland, then in the final 2 lines it becomes refutable

.

A rainbow's something else than seven plain tones, It's less like paint than pastel, hazy, shy With in-between shades, namelessly enbraided. That's why it seems so human and so tender. A rainbow surely views us through the eye Through which it's viewed - the cararacts, the floaters ("Two Landscapes")

These lines puzzle me -

• "The stepping down from the bus to begin that journey/ Of infinite dread and tedium, which love is,/ And follow wherever the weather carries you" (p.41)
• "Pathogens crowd where a thirst is disturbed by rain" (p.79)
• "The years crawled over me, disguised as years" (p.83)

There are rhymes, though the following example probably isn't the best -

A place is home, however dim or dead. It's much less trouble than a double bed. You think your place is someone's heart or head? Forget it. Love geography instead ("No Man's Land")

I don't get this

A Feast of Epiphany The god of human love was king of kings Then to our wooden classroom, and wherever Our finger moved, a small star cruised with us, Nervously eyeing shapes beyond the wind

"Words for politicians" is surely too long.