A Single
Ascension moves quietly, almost randomly, to a big statement. It opens with the trite
announcement: There are windows / onto every night You can’t argue with it but
it doesn’t really enrich your life to be reminded of it. We are then given a few
options – starlight, moonlight or empty Then we are invited to look
through a specific window where an ancient town . . . . sleeps (although we only
have the last embers of the sun). Perhaps it has been a very hot day and no-one has
stirred. Perhaps it has been a while since the town has stirred. Perhaps it is just a
quiet and sleepy town. It is ancient after all. We are told the air is cold and clean
Perhaps it’s been a wintry day. But as readers and responders to poetry we are
already picking up a few things. One of them is the tightness. There is nothing excessive
or florid in the language. We can see from the layout of the poem it is likely to continue
in a tight style. across on the green hilltop / an apple tree blossoms white So
we’re in early Spring. Lovers are embracing. As readers of poetry we are beginning to
suspect we are being led somewhere. The lovers / embrace oblivious to their dying It’s
getting a bit serious now. Bells are ringing hours. Little echoes of Ode on a Grecian
Urn start playing in the mind, bringing themes of immortality, the longevity of art,
the brevity of love, etc. It sounds like the scene may be European or South American.
Bells don’t ring hours here in Australia except in the big town halls. Hang on, she
has a ticket / for the single ascension She’s going to visit an historic -
artistic? - religious? - site. Raphael! Artist and archangel as well. Ascension. Heaven.
The roads float off into cloud, no less.
The poem reads
as a simple description. For devotees of Strunk and White, this tightly controlled,
short-word language would tick all the boxes! But each little step has nudged us deeper
and deeper into serious thoughts about life and death and loving and now art and heaven.
We have come a long way from just looking out a window. Next, all streets meet beneath
the ducal palace Yes, it is the adjective from duke. So royalty is introduced. Then we
go into rooms full of grace and light We have left the apple tree and the lovers
behind. And we’ve ascended from a ducal palace to a cathedral – although the
cathedral is in the painting. So we’re still in the duke’s palace but obviously
a duke who liked art. Note that, although the poet is using the tight style of short and
simple words, when we reach the palace and the art we have three much less common –
perhaps even metaphorically exotic – words ( ducal, alabaster and ammonite) to help
convey the sense of otherliness.
all / women
are beautiful here / . . . / with dark eyes Do you notice that quickening of pace with
the repeated sounds of ears, here, hair, dark, here and dark again. Also at
the repeated here we find dark cypresses And what do they do? They seam
the sky The first metaphor of the poem: the first time a word is used outside the
literal. The trees against the skyline are not actually sewing heaven and earth together
but it’s easy to pretend they do. And they do it as if there had never been a rift
between heaven and earth. Now that’s a big statement. There has been a rift between
heaven and earth but the art in the palace suggests there hadn’t been. Did the
artists – Botticelli, Raphael - wish there hadn’t been? Or does, somehow or
other, artistic creation overshadow the rift, give a hint, a taste, of what life would
have been like before the rift? Did the rift occur in linear time as we understand it? Or
in some unknown other way hinted at by the art?
A Single
Ascension is a deceptively simple poem that weaves its way from a trite opening to a
forceful and questioning conclusion one innocent little side step at a time, like a Knight
on a chessboard zigzagging to checkmate.
Yet if you
listen closely you can also hear very effective uses of sound. Read the lines from terracotta
rooftops to for the single ascension and note the play of the hard c, b, p and
t sounds. Note also the placement of lovers and oblivious.
‘Oblivious’ could have been ‘unaware’ or ‘unwise’ but as it
is you have the double placement of the l and v sounds. When played out with subtlety,
these pleasing sound patterns or echoes for want of a better word are the mark of a good
poet; one who chooses words not only for their meaning but also the subtle music of their
sounds. It is often what happens when revising. A word or phrase that means much the same
as another will be used instead because of a more pleasing or counterpointing sound
pattern – or maybe it just pleases the ear more in the overall flow of the poem. It
is, of course, one of the reasons we like poetry so much.
Nicolette
Stasko’s Glass Cathedrals – New and Selected Poems contains many such
concentrated, thoughtful poems that will set you thinking about the big issues. Little
poems with a big glow! She writes feelingly and with precision about the daily grind and
joy of life – being feverish, buying second-hand books, preparing a meal of oysters,
taking prescription medicines. The poems addressing issues with her daughter and her
mother are especially moving. She has a concentrated style and uses minimal or no
punctuation except a capital letter at the start of the poem or a bit of extra spacing
between words to slow down your reading. This varies slightly over the four sections from
each previous book but is not distracting. The writing is so precise that you pause at the
right times when reading.
Punctuation is
both a guide and a restriction. Without it, you, the reader, have to focus more and force
yourself to derive more from each word and phrase and the way they were placed and the
sequence in which they unfold into your awareness.
Poetry works at
a different level to explanatory prose. There’s nothing wrong with explanatory prose
– it’s very good on paint tins, in non-fiction books and in reviews, but poetry
does something different and some poets’ minds, though extremely competent in
traditional grammar, work on another level that is hard to define. For instance you
won’t find too many uses of ‘because’ or ‘since’ or phrases such
as ‘as a result of’ in this book. The links between concepts are more
metaphorical than grammatical/logical. More on the level of the . . . poetic.
The cover is brilliant. A book
cover should make you want to open the book and this one does that. A photograph of a
window (another window!) in a wall where the cement render has dropped away to reveal the
bricks; inviting Autumnal colours set off a stark dead tree. The internal contradiction of
the warmth of the colours and the starkness of the illustration immediately grabs your
attention. The type-setting is forceful and punchy.
. . . and
now for something competently different . . .
Whereas Nicolette Stasko’s
poetry is tight and sparse, L K Holt’s poetry is more generous, spread out and . . .
. punctuated! Her first full collection, MAN wolf MAN, has recently been published
by John Leonard Press and is a highly accomplished piece of work. Let’s look at this
compelling villanelle and not become too jealous.
-
The
Flowers in the Vase Clench
-
into
a Gang of Fists in the Night
- The flowers in the vase clench
into a gang of fists in the night,
- which is not long if we are all
senses, fox-bright in our sleep.
- Your eyelids murmur but hold on
to dream stuff until light.
-
- Twitching like a pup, you run
from phantom-fright.
- In your dreams you are god in a
world without belief.
- The flowers in the vase clench
into a gang of fists in the night,
-
- they watch over our slow
borrowing of limbs: under white
- sheets the rumoured shapes of
our sleep’s secret choreography.
- Your eyelids murmur but hold
onto dream stuff until light
-
- while you curl up: with
boy-scout skill your body’s knot is tied,
- measured hearts beating
one-less, one-less in sleep’s prophesy.
- The flowers in the vase clench
into a gang of fists in the night,
-
- they guard our axis backs that
roll like sea rocks in the tide.
- In our dreams our fears are
worked to death or set free.
- Your eyelids murmur but hold on
to dream stuff until light.
-
- I watch your face, empty until
you wake and remember life.
- Love is so apparent in the
morning, when it is found before you seek.
- The flowers in the vase unfurl
into a flock of birds in the light.
- Your eyelids open and leave
behind dream stuff with the night.
The opening
line has sixteen syllables and probably six stressed ones. The third last line has
eighteen syllables and probably seven stresses. I say ‘probably’ because in such
long lines you and I could argue for a very long time about the number of stresses. As we
read on we quickly realise this will not be a common pentameter based villanelle but one
with a much more riotous music and though it may only have distant memory traces of metre
it has rhythm and natural music in abundance. The rhymes are relaxed. The first group
being night, light, phantom-fright, tied, tide, life; the second group are much
looser – sleep, belief, choreography, prophecy, free, and seek. The
poem is replete with sparkling images – all senses, fox-bright; twitching like a
pup; the slow borrowing of limbs (with its hint of burrowing); the rumoured shapes
of sleep’s secret choreography; and the list goes on. Fecund with imagery and
thought, it glitters.
And then just
when we hear a comparatively weaker line – In our dreams our fears are worked to
death or set free. – we are dragged back to villanelle form with the Your
eyelids murmur line. This is the deep drink of the villanelle: the beautiful sense of
pattern, of inevitability, of the form re-assuring us of the poet’s control and, in
this case, the poet making gift to us of phrasing that is both beautiful in what it says
and the way it says it – Love is so apparent in the morning ... and the second
last line - the flowers in the vase unfurl into a flock of birds in the light ...
with its change from its previous form.
It is
interesting to make the comparison with Kenneth Slessor’s poem Sleep and the
different tone of the endings: this one being so warm and positive and Slessor’s remorseless
forceps being quite the opposite. This is a love poem after all, whereas
Slessor’s was a poem about the process of sleeping.
Note also that
the opening line begins an extended sentence each time it is used until the last time with
the sunnier variation. Not only do the flowers clench into a gang of fists
(converting themselves to a nice image) but they also DO something on their two
re-appearances – they watch over and guard us while we sleep. They are protective
fists, not abusive ones. It is the caring between the two sleepers that ends up making
this such a sunny poem despite the phantom-frights and the one-less, one-less
wearing out of the heart in its beating.
However,
glitter and bright images and the odd ‘good line’ are only part of the backbone
of good poetry. For me, poetry should be interesting, have meaning (just a personal quirk
of mine) and a quality some may call music or rhythm or fluency. Have I left out form and
structure? The best poems in this book display all the vertebrae and many ‘good
lines’ as well: from Violence – I came upon a bird nearly through with dying;
from The Children and the World – The children go to school and they come back /
they walk as a procession of little monarchies; from Unfinished Confession – I
sat at a bar once beside an old darling post-op.
The long
sequence Unfinished Confession ticks all the above boxes. It concerns operations
called orchidectomies but the fact that the word ‘orchidectomist’ can be used in
such a casual, everyday manner in a poem that floats on its fluency is a testament to
something like a good ear and a capacity up there with C K Williams for the vigorous use
of multi-syllabic words – incriminating ineptitude, ungratefulness, melancholia,
orchidectomist, and sentimentalist are flung together in a short space at the
end of this long poem in a fluent and easy manner.
Many of the
poems are structured around a loosening or extending of traditional formality. The rhymes
are often just flirting suggestions and the rhythm of the lines more meat than metre. Some
poems sound like they aspire to be villanelles or pantoums, giving off teasing repetitions
and partial repetitions.
For my taste,
as well as the above-examined villanelle, excellent poems in this book include Pompeii,
The Head, The Botanist, The Children and the World and a delightful and heart-warming
little poem called A Problem of Filing.
Sadly I did not
enjoy the (almost) title poem. I thought it a long way from the best in the book and
perhaps a little over-intellectualised. Just my response, of course. Others obviously
thought more of it. The other less than good thing about the book is the cover. We, the
two or three thousand people who read poetry in this country, do appreciate anyone who
invests time and money and spirit into publishing poetry, welcome the John Leonard list of
new and established poets with open arms and send him buckets of encouragement. But the
covers don’t actively draw you in. They don’t have a quality of : quick!
open me now and look inside! The cover on the Stasko book has that quality abundantly,
whereas the John Leonard covers, sadly including the L K Holt one, seem to me a just a bit
flat.
Anyway I can
assure you that both these books, in their distinctly different ways, will enrich your
poetic life. If you cannot find Nicolette Stasko’s impressive, tight and glowing Glass
Cathedrals or L K Holt’s accomplished, riotous and glittering MAN wolf MAN in
the Poetry Requisites section of your local supermarket ring Kris Hemensley at Collected
Works on 03 9654 8873 and he’ll mail them out to you within a day or two.
- DAVID KELLY’S poems have appeared
widely in literary magazines. He won the 2008 Shoalhaven FAW poetry prize. He published OzMuze
in the early 90s and worked for several years at the Sydney-based Poets Union where he
initiated the magazine Five Bells.