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It's strange how important it is to be in the right kind
of receptive mood when reviewing books. The first time I skipped through this
new collection by Pansy Maurer-Alvarez I felt nothing but impatient
resistance. Okay, there's quality here even when you come across lines such
as - 'flanked by the colours of unbridled passion', for example, from
'Helsinki' - which really won't do. Is it still possible to use that phrase
'unbridled passion' and get away with it, never mind make it work in a manner
which is more than seriously 'tongue in cheek?' Yet on second reading I found
the work far more interesting, even allowing for the pastiche re-working of
symbolist high art lyricism. In fact I found this a refreshing change to much
of the more 'prosaic' plain-sentence material I've been inundated with
recently. Even that 'unbridled fashion' began to feel 'knowing' in a manner
which injected something fresh into the phrase and the mix of genuine passion
and 'up-front' high-art lyricism started to do its work. Take this short poem
which I'll quote in full:
CONSIDER
the
fragility of arias
the
pizzicato arrangements
the vinyl
electronic
consider the
vanished ballad hiding what we remembered
the
impeccable classical instruments
a
desirable torso and throat
the
tambourine's shrill shiver in a refrain
the burst
of a bell's sweeping gesture
the rush of breath
reinforcing a chorus
my mouth
sprouting words like
tassel
syntax shellac
don't you
just love the sound
of the word shampoo?
sponge?
The question at the end may seem arch or mannered but it works in the context
of the poem, which harbours a sense of nostalgic luxury, aided by a real
talent for sensuous lyric brevity, not an easy thing to pull off in the
twenty first century. There are also some lovely unexpected lines - 'a
rippled squirm as far as a slender trespass', for example, from 'All Your
Past Fires' and 'Crumbling artefacts tremble in the aquarium of your voice
chamber' ('Droplets') which just about avoid being 'over the top' in a
clichˇd lyric sense because of their oddness and slight inappropriateness.
Yes, I know the surrealists did this a long time ago and did it better but
there's a mix of the genuinely erotic and the genuinely lyrical in these
poems which avoids irony and yet also avoids the sort of slushy romanticism
which I first took them to be. Her vocabulary is often unexpected and phrases
which seem over-familiar manage to have a different 'ring' to them. Pansy
Maurer-Alvarez is a seriously accomplished poet and it's easy on first
appearance to miss this. I wouldn't want a regular diet of this kind of
poetry - it's not really my cup of tea - but there's a delicacy about her
work, allied to a counterpoint toughness which hits the mark. I'm still
trying to make up my mind about Dylan Harris' cover art, a 'melty' image in
yellow, orange and brown, which reminds me of a lot of work of his which I've
seen before.
© Steve Spence 2014
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