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Like Edward Lear,
Nathan Thompson is lyrical and comical, tender and silly all at the same
time. Here is Thompson's two-line poem 'casting calls are almost complete':
the black cat
in the arboretum is to be played by a black cat
because out
of all the applicants she was by far the most beautiful
And as with Edward Lear, the reader is seduced line by line and sweetly
unexpected turn of phrase. It is a little like being lost in a gallery full
of beautiful pictures. You have no idea where you're going, yet you don't
really want to ever find your way out again, even though (or perhaps
precisely because) you
have a thousand things to do back at home or the office. Take this from 'for rain in the
arboretum':
ghosts of
children flitting between branches
on the wings
of birds
so tired and crazy
for a night
in heaven
seems to be
getting
narrower
what with half-kisses
missed and
guilty feather
litter
which isn't an insult
Fairytale images are mixed with other, more sinister details which have all
the conviction of a dream when you are in the middle of one: 'you chased me
down to the apple blossom / where the heart-shaped child offered consolation
/ in the form of money for cigarettes' (from 'the arboretum towards the
beginning').
Throughout, there is a haunting sense of loss and abandonment. The poems can
be read as a kind of continuous, yet fragmented narrative, not unlike a
series of letters addressed to someone the writer has lost but still hopes to
win back, or, at times, to a part of himself he is trying to reach in vain.
Yet there is no self-pity here, thanks to a delicious sense of the absurd, as
in this excerpt from 'tracker action':
do you think
you could find it in your anatomy
to forgive
this caprice [...]
the stars are bursting
like a joke
out of a can without a deadline
and you seem
to be using my name for something
should I sue you
all the way down the street
The sense of a narrative between the poems derives also from the recurrence
of certain motifs, especially that of 'the arboretum', which comes across as
a place which is beautiful and yet suffocating, a place whose heat and
protection is vital for the survival of delicate existences, yet may destroy
other existences at the same time. This is 'the arboretum towards the
beginning' where anything may happen.
Thompson projects sadness and humour together onto situations which are both
everyday and surreal:
listen the conductor has a
purple rose in his lapel
as this is a
special occasion
and he smiles as he checks my ticket
without
grudge he must be
missing somebody terribly
to be so
polite [...]
it'll all be over by the time
we reach the
tunnel I'm
looking forward to that
(from 'projection digressions')
Besides the poems with their disjunct music and patterns across the page,
there are a number of prose poems. Here the narrative is more
straightforwardly linear. Yet at the same time, Thompson's delight in
Learesque nonsense is just as pronounced, as in 'Isobel: A Novel':
I did not
know that Isabel had ever thought about the theology
of beer but
she is very versatile [...]
"Likewise,"
Isobel continues, "beer often involves animals,
including
bishops, and thrives on their eccentricity, teeming with
interest like
medieval spit to modern science. This makes beer
preferable to
water, which is all but silent. And explains why
Marxists
value water over bishops."
Thompson is a poet who allows words and the music of words to create their
own meaning, yet the poems are always delicately-balanced and
carefully-crafted. I had read
and enjoyed many of his poems before in magazines such as nth position and Stride, yet hadn't realised just how powerful and
evocative they can be until reading them together in this collection (his
first, by the way). Each time I go back to the poems, I find something new.
There are, as with any poet, moments of weakness. Usually Thompson is able to
pull off the trick of staying just this side of sentimentality, but
occasionally he crosses the line, for example, when he writes 'goodnight my
love / I meant it all', which I don't think was meant ironically. His abrupt tone
changes, while normally successful, can cause his poems to self-destruct, as
when he breaks off to say 'and i'm wondering again / this time about the near
miss of the me/tree rhyme in lines 5 and 6'. I don't know if this is meant to
be funny or post-modern or what, but for me he blows it here. At the other
times, continual mention of 'the arboretum' can seem a little artificial, as
if he is trying to impose a kind of unity on a fragmented work, when in
reality the music of the poems and their themes are enough on their own to
create this unity. But enough carping. Taken overall, the arboretum
towards the beginning is a
remarkable first collection from an important new talent.
©
Ian Seed 2008
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