MARK O'FLYNN
REVIEW:
JENNIFER HARRISON'S
'FOLLY AND GRIEF'
Black Pepper, 2006
ISBN 1 876044 45 4 133 pp.
Folly and Grief is a dense and
generous collection of poems from Jennifer Harrison, her fourth. Within the range of her
recurring obsessions Harrison offers quirky observations in finely honed language that is
lyrical and imagistic, and in a form that is structurally confident and varied. The blurb
describes her work as ‘ravishing’, and this descriptor is apt. A ravishing,
stylish poet.
The book is divided into two sections -
folly and grief. - each with a long title poem to conclude. It must be said that her
favoured subject is perhaps an unusual one for poetry. Harrison’s concerns are
dominated by an interest in theatre and performance, ostensibly the characters from
Commedia dell’Arte. Why not? Poetry will question everything. She asks of Pierrot:
‘Can’t you find something new to write about?’ The poems are not
‘theatrical’ as such. They are not dramatisations of stock characters, but take
their essential traits, and apply them in highly poeticized and lyrical ways to the
business of contemporary living. They deal with the real world by exploring the
manifestations of archetypes in a variety of performance styles. In Clown she
concludes:
I have metaphor, and behind metaphor
more costume.
All these performers, in their various
guises, serve as more personal metaphors:
- A juggler first conquers clumsiness
- then writes the same poem, over and
over.
The analogy is precise. Harrison’s
notion of performance is not restricted to Commedia dell’Arte. Her stage is broad.
But like Dorothy Hewett she keeps returning to the same subject. It includes a
multifarious array of poems dealing with a range of activities which, at least on a
superficial level, might be regarded as some sort of performance. There are poems
exploring the circus, juggling, carnival, side show alley, busking, acrobatics, clowning,
ballet, film and so forth. It is a rich source of imagery. Even skateboarding fits into
this street theatre aesthetic. A ventriloquist’s dummy, as do all the others, clearly
has deeper symbolic implications.
While not every poem alludes to theatre
or performance, it is clearly a recurring conceit for which Harrison has a predilection.
About the only activity that is not addressed directly is performance poetry. Harrison is
too lyrical for that. In this sense the poems approach a Brechtian sense of
life-as-performance; a witness-at-the-car-accident type of theatre. There are domestic
scenes which collude with the reader to strip away the fourth wall and eavesdrop. We even
observe childbirth as a kind of beautifully moving performance. Some poems take the form
of a poetic monologue, but usually they treat the theatre-as-subject with more impersonal
lyricism. The point of view is not solely descriptive, but seems to take on an oblique
stance which allows ‘feminism’s busking licence.’
Her preoccupation with
‘theatre’ as a topic is intriguing. It is difficult, for example, to get the
juggler’s sense of perpetual movement down on paper, yet Harrison approaches this
with some typically arresting imagery:
- We’re afraid he’ll slip and
fall on the wet road //
- but he juggles his macabre salad well.
There are, of course, other pieces
concerned with such subjects as painting, disease, storms, fishing, travel, friendship; a
broad ranging canvas in fact.
Being a psychiatrist by trade Harrison
occasionally slips in a quiet psychological reference, which presents a nice synthesis of
her various disciplines - theatre, psychiatry and poetry.
- Do you understand how I’m forced
to defend myself
- in dreams of rabbits and ferris-wheel
rats?
While some of the poems deal with the
rather ‘tawdry’ world of street theatre, Harrison’s language is highly
refined, eloquent, even tending to the mellifluous, when sometimes what we want is the
grunge. Mostly however there is a balance in her imagism between the earthy and the
porcelain:
- The lips of a ferry
- licking thin cream from the river
Sometimes this grandiloquence can be
irksome. One can only take so much of ‘fecund glades’; sunsets that
‘glowered like a necrosis’; or phrases like: ‘scholium illuminates /
porcelain’s tissane history.’ (Huh?) Sometimes the analogy drawn between circus
tricks and writing is stretched a bit: ‘near the sea wall / the unicyclist in my pen
// travels so far’
On balance though this is a small
quibble. More frequently there are striking images such as:
- a string of light rising
- through the lake’s handbag of fish
Part two of the book still retains the
performance conceit in a substantial number of the poems. The circus tropes predominate,
but in a more elegiac tone. Folly and grief: it is a balance of symbiotic opposites. Here
grief takes the stage in a variety of domestic and tragic scenes and, as such, seems to
reflect a more dolorous view of the world with images that pull you up short like:
‘the sky’s blue mastectomy.’
However there is nothing morbid or
depressing about this, even if the language is more conceptual and sombre, the energy
somehow static. The poems are still dense with ideas. The imagery has a surreal edge:
- Broken stones forget their dry kiss and
giant moths
- touch the moon with flaming wings.
While the landscape is largely one of
grief and loss, the mood is not one of mourning; the language is paradoxically exultant.
The reader does not grieve.
- I might have lost my way, forever,
- in mourning’s indifferent mime.
The reader is distanced by this more
philosophically abstract quality of the language. One has to work for the rewards.
Although as soon as you think this you come across, for example, the moving poem of the
loss of her father, (Galleria), and think you’ve been reading these all wrong.
Harrison’s control of form is
measured and precise. Structurally the book hangs together with a sense of well-balanced
wholeness. (The cover, showing ancient ceramic acrobats, is perfectly representative).
Each poem displays Harrison’s attention to craft, and there is a diverse range of
poetic structures.
There is danger in a book this long of
the reader tiring of the style. However Harrison is astute enough, and too much in control
of her craft for that. There is enough variety to keep the reader consistently engaged. If
anything, I preferred the first section of the book, a little folly over grief, but this
is splitting hairs, both are marvelous.
Chekhov once said that ‘every time
I come out of the theatre more conservative than I go in.’ Harrison is more
optimistic. She says:
- I pass through ghosts
- each time I leave the theatre
- each time I feel the kindness of the sun.
This is a dense yet celebratory book;
sprawling, yet tightly controlled; a cross-pollination of subject and genre that is
eccentric and appealing, with a powerful use of language, and enough confidence to carry
the idea. Sometimes it leaves you slightly gobsmacked.