DEREK MOTION
Review:
Theatre by Alison Croggon (Salt Publishing)
You’ll find a theatrical
aporia set up in the first poem of Alison Croggon’s Theatre, where ‘Poem
for John’ begins with ‘You ask for a poem / and I say / I have no poem’.
Clearly Croggon has a poem. She has a book full of them. This pretence of doubt though is
manufactured to allow an idea to emerge, the deceptively simple idea that indeed we do
‘need poems’ – poetry is curiously appropriate during times that seem to
offer ‘no balance’. It’s not too hard to see this feeling underpinning the
whole volume. The existence of such a collection is an argument for poetry in times of
violence and uncertainty (and Salt’s appealing hardcover presentation perhaps an
argument for investment in poetry too). The titular poem ‘Theatre’ is set
against a desert landscape, and describes a woman somehow punished for her actions,
‘action breached before its time’. In crisp and perfectly judged lines the poem
builds on the first and begins to sketch out a method to Croggon’s book: the pieces
will search out such complex issues are as constantly fodder for the media (war and
cultural dissonance in the Middle East), and it will do so thoroughly, by investigating
personal and general viewpoints, by utilising analogy and not ignoring historical context.
And the technique gains its force from the pivotal idea of ‘theatre’.
Representing reality as a stage-show does not necessarily remove any vital force; real
situations can also take on the absurdity of a cartoon. The theatrical element pervades
Croggon’s subject matter.
Of course it is a fallacy to
assume that times now are worse than ever before and I don’t think Croggon does this.
Yet she does draw a parallel between modernity and a diminished faculty for words. The two
prose-poems ‘History’ and ‘Ode’ present an interesting divide between
an abstract now and then. History was a point where power bases of civilisation were
formed, a collection of incompletely understood ideas that somehow formed a coherent whole
nevertheless. And even that concept is found wanting; the poet pictures herself
‘longing for the dazzling conceits of civilisation to be actual, for the profound and
bloody pleasures which underlay them.’ If there was an actuality in it all we
wouldn’t be so reliant on language, that that can be so easily taken away:
- Words of course were beyond us.
They were what killed us
- to begin with. They were taken
away from the mouths that loved them
- and given to men who worked
their sorceries in distant cities,
- who said that difficult things
were simple now and that simple things
- no longer existed.
-
-
(from ‘Ode’)
There are other poems in this
collection that attempt to compare a distant past to a more constrained present.
‘Beasts’ references an ‘innocent age’, one where it seems all living
beasts were free in their own habitat. ‘Coma’ invokes that ideal myth of perfect
times past Eden, as if the writer seeks to gain a personal understanding of what can
possibly go wrong by making use of the monologue.
But then there are phase-shifts
in this volume. While the beginning might prepare you for a serious (and often dark)
collection of poems that confront unrest and cultural dissonance, this is not to be the
consistent concern. After an untitled and italicised conversation with herself –
roving over the vain hunt for poetic images, the dissolution of any notion of a
‘self’ this often entails – Croggon presents us with a lighter aspect of
her craft, poems that freely take on board the notion of writing as a means to creating
whatever reality is desired. ‘From Out of the Hat’ imagines the item of headgear
as the vessel of creativity, one where ‘souls of poets dead and gone / perfume the
hat’s lining / with the grease of passion’, and it is never mournful of the
predicament. Croggon’s found and freely constructed poems are also a delight –
reminding us that here are also absurdities that are purely comical, as well as those that
tend toward the malign. I think it is important that these poems exist because they do
lead on from other discoveries: if in fact poems are necessary (as the existence of Theatre
is testament to) what can they do? Highlighting unsolvable inconsistencies in civilisation
that bring on dire consequences would be futile without also finding the joy that inheres
in chaos. Like a kid running blithely around the house for no reason besides the fact that
it is possible.
And as a dalliance in the
mythic indicates, in the face of unknowing we find solace in singing, in poetry. In
‘Once Upon a Time’ Croggon paints a picture of a creature born inside a nut, who
emerges to wonder at everything but receive no explanation other than that he can divine
for himself. It ends thusly: ‘Something wet ran down his face, but he didn’t
know what it was. He began to sing.’ Perhaps there is justice in the world and it can
be found through poetry? Poetic justice? It makes at least some sense. And the justice
could effectively be Platonic, justness undertaken for the highest of purposes, for the
intrinsic pleasure, but also for the instrumental reasons outside of a poem – the
change that awareness can create.
All of these concerns within Theatre
do enable Croggon’s poetry to do something interesting, and furthermore to
demonstrate that poetry should do something comparably interesting. The poems that are
pasted together from other texts at times function humorously, but also serve to highlight
a danger inherent in haphazard ideology. And the juxtaposition of ‘Poems for
Television’ and ‘O My America’ helps to emphasise that the danger of
unthinking dogma is evident in many cultures. Croggon adeptly uses language and form to
show this. Death, torture, and the unacknowledged role of femininity in traditional
religion are rendered powerfully, whether in tight sparse lines, or scattered across the
page drawing attention to every ebb and flow:
- THIRD
she is an ear
- wet with song she is a cunt
swollen
-
with god’s glory she is an eye
- blistered with light she is skin
-
split by goading kisses she
-
is a stomach parched
- to ecstasies…
(‘Dance of the Seven Veils’)
The volume concludes with the
longer poems ‘November Burning’ and ‘Translations from Nowhere’. These
pieces felt less assured to me, although I do see that this is the point, and that this is
the necessary conclusion. It’s just that the questioning pose (no matter how
immanent) can get repetitive:
- I would like to know some
answers
- but can barely shape the
questions out of fear
- there are no new questions
- only questions that have always
gone unanswered
- must I ask them
- every night and every morning of
my life
-
-
(from ‘November Burning’)
There is a truth to the
pondering these poems demonstrate but there can also be a heaviness or lethargy that comes
with pondering (continually answerless pondering). Although the following excerpts are
taken out of their sequential context, the effect in ‘Translations from Nowhere’
is cumulative: ‘the world, naked as usual, thick with meaning, / and now it makes you
so weary, how it dissolves / like eyes in water…’; ‘..every day / comes
after another day / as if past and future / actually exist’; and then ‘Evening
turns to metaphor’. The focus is on unravelling, dissolution, and finally the thawing
of what seems set as ice. I think Croggon might be invoking hope for change at the close
of this collection, but the danger is that the reading experience can also finish in a
slightly dissolute manner as the poems take us through this process.
For me the ultimate result of a
play labelled ‘tragi-comic’ is the tragic feel. Elements of comedy permeate but
it is often the despondency of the ending that stays with me, the tragedy that underpins
the work. Is this the case with Croggon’s Theatre? I suspect it’s not so
simple; perhaps she is writing poetically with an awareness of what the mixture of the
tragic and the comic can theoretically achieve. I believe this to be a seriously
worthwhile endeavour. There is darkness in the imagery and themes of this book, and it
means the reading experience will be ultimately a sombre one. Or it will be an up and down
experience, and the transition from light to dark might sometimes jar. Yet the acute way
in which these poems interrogate the state of the world – in parallel with the state
and existential composition of the writer – means the sombre reading experience is
also spiked with hope. Alongside this Croggon’s feel for the interplay of syntax and
the line is always artful. The theatre of doubt she has constructed here reminds us that a
creative act of speculation is always essential, personally and otherwise. And if the
oscillation between humour and seriousness (as opposed to a smooth ‘collection’
of like-minded poems) seems uneven we should remember that this is the way it is. The
theatre is a site for reality too.
- DEREK MOTION is a final year PhD
student at Charles Sturt University, where he is composing a 'Poetics of Failure'. He is
the Director of the Booranga Writers' Centre. He is also putting together a poetry ms, as
one tends to do.