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Richard Berengarten has long had a notion of a community
of poets, as made explicit in his organisation of the Cambridge Poetry
Festivals in the 1970s, events which continued into the 1980s with a
variety of directors and locally-based organisers. His vision has been a
generous one, embracing variety and difference, yet his notion of poetry as
a major artform which can deal with the 'big issues' has often been at odds
with a more 'domestic-based' poetry, tamed and toothless, which has prevailed
within a 'naturalised' mainstream of British poetry publishing. His own work
- whether as Richard Burns or with his recently reclaimed family name - has
always been ambitious, though 'awkward' in the sense that while taking on
board aspects of modernism and even, 'post-modern' discourse, there has been
a continuing interest in traditional form and aspects of narrative which sit
uneasily within a contemporary context. His body of work is impressive in its
scope, variety and geographical location, based to some extent upon his
having a somewhat peripatetic existence in terms of earning an income, though
he continues to live in Cambridge.
His latest collection, Manual - an
idea neatly encapsulated in the cover artwork, left-hand placed palm-down
with fingers splayed on front-cover, right-hand on the back - suggests a
relationship between the physical and the intellectual not often explored in
poetry, even where the writing includes an element of the 'meta-critical', as
Berengarten's work surely does. There's also a Romantic aspect to his poetry
which embraces clarity and lucidity - a risky business you might think - in a
manner which often comes off, against the odds, and which is often unbearably
moving, and I don't say that lightly. Take the final piece in the collection,
'Frame-piece 2', for example, which refers to the dedication to his mother at
the front of the collection:
Frame-piece 2
Curious
how suddenly, Rosalind,
out of a buried
remembering,
I find you
in those gestures
I used to
see you making, which
now,
without my reckoning,
bloom
again out of my own hands,
as though
yours, tenacious roots,
had grown
grains of your own
ways of
doing and achieving things,
deviously,
through and into mine.
Although there is a central concern with the theme of mortality in
Berengarten's writing, here as elsewhere, his isn't the usual concern with
bereavement or ultimate loss of self (though these topics are inevitably
touched on), but a reaching out and across to the dead in a manner which is
at times a bit spooky (I'm occasionally reminded of Kubrick's The
Shining, as the visual descriptions are
so vivid) yet generous, imaginative and essentially related to the future,
via children and the yet-to-be-born. I'm further reminded of Stanley
Spencer's strange yet alluring 'resurrection of the dead' paintings, based in
Cookham. The spectre of the holocaust remains a presence in these poems, as
it is in much of Berengarten's poetry, particularly the powerful masterpiece Angels, which
I still think is his finest work:
15
Respected
fellows and allies of these hands
have
coolly signed death warrants then dined
inspected
slaves in quarries mines foundries
designed
gaols torture rooms extermination chambers
issued
instructions to builders and surveyors
pulled
first triggers on victims over ditches
personally
slit throats and kicked the dying in
dialled
for bulldozers to destroy evidence
played
chess poured wine opened their flies washed
then
emailed superiors for further instructions
(from 'Manual - the first twenty')
Like Angels, this writing
appears to take in events 'across history' even though there are specific
hintings towards twentieth century genocide, and in this sense I can also see
similarities to Andy Brown's 'Ecce Homo' from his recent collection the
fool and the physician (Salt - see my review on Stride site).
Manual is split into five
sections, each containing twenty poems, each poem having two five-line
stanzas, continuing a tradition within Berengarten's work of a formal structure
allowing for a certain 'free-play' within the framing stricture. Yet the work
in this collection has a very modern feel despite what I've said above about
the play between tradition(s) and the contemporary, combining a series of
snapshots across time and space with clear focus and mini-narratives.
In the section 'Holding the Sea' we are given a brief preface, contrasting
Matthew Arnold's 'dictum' - 'Poetry is a criticism of life.' with
Berengarten's riposte 'Poetry is a criticism of death.' This point is made
manifest by images which celebrate the pleasures and toils of living:
3
Outside the
cafe underneath the plane tree
the old
sailors play backgammon
Little they
know or care about pasts or futures
who once
chugged out past overhanging islands
and caught
shoalfuls of fish in their long nets
Islands
reached stony fingers out to grab them
Hidden rocks
and reefs sharpened their nails
Waves grew
claws to slash at them and snatch them
Darkness
itself unleashed invisible talons
and now they
sit outside the cafe like ordinary men
(from 'Holding the Sea - the third twenty')
Berengarten combines evocation with reflection, breathtaking speculation with
classical allusion in a manner which combines history with the 'here and now'
and projects, optimistically and hopefully, into the future.
©
Steve Spence 2014
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