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Matt Simpson's sixth collection, In Deep, is his most lyrical to date. At the heart of it is
'an uncompleted sequence' to his wife Monika. These poems are heartbreakers,
yet many of them are gently humorous: Simpson's favourite trick of making you
smile seconds before he moves you, perhaps to tears, is still very much in
evidence. The sequence, 'November Song', the title an ironic reference to the
Kurt Weill song, is the history of a marriage, from its first exciting
beginnings when Monika was a beautiful young German actress come to a
language school to improve her English, falling in love with her earnest
young tutor:
a
technicolour girl, come to class,
to master
phrasal verbs and me
('Strange
Meeting')
However, despite the exuberance of some of the poems at the beginning of the
sequence, the opening poem not only exquisitely expresses the poet's
tenderness and love for his wife, but problems are indicated which are
developed more fully later on:
Hard for her
to live with peace,
she who
skipped in blood and played
on
blitz-smashed masonry.
('Prelude')
In a mature and long-standing marriage, partners become carefully attuned to
their spouse's quirks, so there is much to identify with, even if the exact
circumstances, bravely faced up to, are not the same. The sequence ought to
be read in the published order initially, though it is hard not to dip into
favourites afterwards. My personal favourite is 'An Autumn Rose'. This
describes a moment when the poet has found a 'shy lover's letter shaming me'
on his desk, together with 'an October rose', such an exquisite symbol of
mature love.
Wrapped within this sequence is another, giving voices to many of the
characters in The Tempest. This
is a very different treatment from Auden's sequence of Tempest poems, however. The theme running through it is
imprisonment/freedom, as each character contemplates life beyond the isle.
This provides Simpson with an objective correlative for different states of
mind. Simpson is adept at creating different voices and his women are just as
believable as his men. Witness Sycorax:
Impossible
for you to imagine me
anywhere else
but cramped up in
the syllables
of others,
unvilified,
without a name that sounds
like boots
stamping on cockroaches;
Typical of Simpson, metaphysical wit rises up like yeast, to leaven the
wholesome bread of this lovely sequence. He also has Stephano passing the
bottle, advocating drink as a cure all, using internal rhymes to catch
something of this character's desperate gung-ho. Fittingly, though, Gonzalo
has the last word as he tries, 'to make the best of it'. As in the play,
Gonzalo's voice is the voice of maturity and good sense, and it is what the
poet finally has to do - accept that this is the only response that works.
The other angles explored by the other voices reach a resolution here.
This wouldn't be a true Simpson collection without some of the elegies for
which he is known. Simpson manages again to make us smile as well as mourn.
For example, his comic and tender portrait of an uncle, who rode a motorbike,
was a madcap and played the trumpet; or his memorial for George Butterworth
in which he imagines stopping World War I to rescue him. Simpson achieves a
poignant contrast between tenderness and violence when he says he would have:
limped
him out of
the shallow trench...
with its
splashed blood and brains...
brought him
back
to the
damaged landscapes of sweet home...
('Banks of
Green Willow')
There are many other poems here to delight the music lover, as well as
celebratory poems about nature, such as the light-hearted 'Cicadas' and the
delighted sighting of dolphins on holiday. So many of the poems in this
collection portray people: a couple glimpsed on a train, a charity-shopping
friend, a train journey in which he links people with places - it is clear
Simpson has an affection for humanity with all its foibles. His jazz poems
are exquisite in their wry humour and their enticing use of language:
They say jazz
is a country of the old,
of left-over
men, guys with grizzled beards,
plaits or
pony tales, out-of-date dudes
with drawled
allusions to the hoary
good old days
of hip and swing and cool,
cats in awe
of cats they learned from,
the real
McCoys that went before.
('Old
Hands')
The delicious humour of this is warmed by the obvious affection and the
skilful deployment of alliteration and half rhyme. The world of classic films
and the culture of less sophisticated times is still an important part of
Simpson's world, representing his youth and looking back, evoking the glamour
of the times, for example in a poem for Julie London, 'Only a Thimbleful'.
One of the most unusual poems here is a sonnet which addresses Shakespeare's
sonnets, interrogating them:
What swan-
Feathered
sonnets are rhyming dustily
Somewhere on
the lost side of the equation?
This collection includes a great variety of poems, although always at the
centre remains the sequence, 'November Song'. Simpson also returns to his
enduring family theme with a pair of matching poems about his parents: 'Out
There' and 'In Here', which draw beautifully the exterior male world his
father inhabited: 'blustery docks... lumbering cranes', contrasting with the
interior domestic world of women like his mother: 'words locked/ in a diary
never penned.'
This is a lovely collection, which makes one look afresh at the world and
re-evaluate it. Simpson has lost none of the muscularity of his language in
the lyricism of these poems. If you are a follower of his writing, this
collection brings new delights, whilst affirming he still has plenty to say,
returning to old themes and uncovering fresh ones. If you have not read
Simpson before, In Deep is an
ideal immersion.
© Angela Topping 2006
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