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Amneoir, Abstractions,
Atkins
Things Come On An Amneoir, Joseph
Harrington (Wesleyan University Press)
Spectral Emphatic, Anna
Mckerrow (£7.00, The Knives and Forks and Spoons Press)
The Logic of the Stairwell and Other Images, Marc Atkins (Shearsman)
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Joseph Harrington's new book Things Come On, An Amneoir, is one of the most unusual and experimental books
I have read in recent times. 'Amneoir', his own word, combines, 'memoir' and
'amnesia', creating a word which articulates the two major themes of this
book. It is a blend of poetry; verbatim quotations taken from interviews,
personal diary entries, images, tables, and memoir, interwoven together to
make an interesting and challenging read. Harrington connects, through two
chapters based on Nixon's resignation and the subsequent investigation, his
own mother's tragic death from breast cancer and the Watergate scandal
involving the then president Richard Nixon. However it too often felt like
the reader would need a doctorate in twentieth century American politics with
a specialism in Watergate to really understand the text. Harrington offers
the reader several pages of reference notes, but these could have been more
helpful and I found myself having to look up certain names and references on
the internet. Having challenging subject matter is always a positive in a
book but when that content becomes inaccessible because of a need for
specialised knowledge, it puts readers off, as well as limiting the books
readership. This is not to say writers should dumb down but there is a
balance to be struck between challenging the reader and being accessible
which Harrington doesn't quite achieve, especially with a British readership.
Where his new book does become accessible and intensely touching however is
during the passages accounting his mothers death:
Nobody will
ever write a book, probably about my mother,
Well I guess
all of you would say this about your mother:
My mother was
a saint.'
[From
'Resignation']
Watergate and his mother are always on an even keel, one never overbears the
other. The private and public pains are experienced at the same time, they
are equitable, one is not worse than the other. His poetry within the book
connects the prose interviews together adding a less analytical approach to
the narrative of memory and the nature of remembering. Harrington's poetry is
at its best when contrasting the everyday activities of life like getting
milk with the high drama of Watergate and the high emotion of his mother's death
such as this quotation:
In the myriad
kalpas of gigabytyes of worlds: and later I have to go get some milk.
[From
'Investigation']
He uses contemporary language to great effect, with humour and good
understanding of poetic technique. However, I would have liked to have seen
more poetry in this book because it is obvious Harrington has a deep interest
in language. The poetry in this collection is successful and rewarding
however it sometimes gets lost within the other parts of the book; the poetry
was not allowed to shine through. His poetry is simple but stark and
understated especially at the end of the book, seen in this quotation which
has a hint of L.P Hartley's famous quotation about it:
my mother
lives under the ground
So I am drawn
to that country
[From
'Resignation'
Harrington's book is not a poetry collection, and doesn't attempt to be, it
wouldn't succeed if it did. As an exercise in experimenting with structure,
analysing memory and the relationship between the private and the pubic it
works well. The average reader will not always understand or know the
intricate references to Watergate but the emotional tragedy of his mothers'
death born out through Harrington's subtle mix of genres and language will
connect with all readers.
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Anna Mckerrow's second poetry collection is entitled Spectral
Emphatic promises so much in its premise
and yet delivers very little. The title poem of this collection contains
everything which I find frustrating about the collection, the expectation of
narrative which is only ever partly fulfilled, the clichˇd imagery and a
purposeful obscurity in its language. Mckerrow's language is too often over
the top unfortunately, using religious and spiritual images which are not
concrete enough to really allow her voice to come through. Therefore the
reader gets lost in the abstractions and fails to understand what she is
actually trying to say. This quotation from the title poem Spectral Emphatic
portrays this:
They roost
among its evangelical exhortations for spiritual revolution.
Good poetry is based upon subtlety, precision of language and showing the
reader, rather than telling the reader everything, essentially trusting the
reader. 'Spectral Emphatic' fails on all three points. The poetry is often
didactic, clichˇd and her obvious love of language could be used so much
better, if concrete images were used. After saying all this, Mckerrow's best
poem in this collection comes right at the end of the book, 'A Bibliomantic
poem', because it makes an attempt to do all these things, with one of the
better lines being:
Without truly
understanding her own, motives, the writer
photocopied page 8 of every book on the tree-shelf bookshelf
in her study.
Although I usually have an aversion to meta-poetry, poetry about writing
poetry, unless it is done especially well with flair (I still have my
reservations) but this poem is adequate in its attempt to tackle the subject.
She approaches it well, using definite language, in an almost prose poem
style to end up with a poem that is funny and insightful. However this poem
is far from perfect, McKerrow slips into abstractions, using adverbs like
'yearning' to try and sound more poetic when a more concrete word would be
better. Unfortunately after reading this collection several times I couldn't
find much I liked about it. It lacks the clarity and precision of language
which is necessary to create good poetry.
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Marc Atkins new collection of prose poems is entitled The
Logic of the Stairwell and Other Images,
and for me it was the most rewarding read of all three books. It is obvious
from his visually detailed prose poetry that Atkins was an artist and
photographer prior to being a poet and this is not a bad perspective to be
coming from when writing poetry. His long flowing sentences take the reader
into a different world, filled with detail and unusual metaphors. When Atkins
is at his best he is direct and concrete, he occasionally gets lost in over
the top language but these are infrequent and hidden by his skill to show the
reader a new perspective on old themes like relationships. Atkins experiments
with the form and structure of his prose poems, shortening the sentence
structure with one poem consisting of only two words. 'The Shorts' section at
the end of the book is an enjoyable section of poems. They are short
sometimes only one sentence, with clarity of imagery. His use of repetition
supports the content of the poetry unlike other poets where form is forced
upon the content. 'The Damned' however is my favourite section of the book
because of the highly visual atheistic used through the piece, such as this
quotation:
I saw the two
photographed a year ago. Set upright on a
mantelpiece
leaning against an enabled cigarette box alongside
several
others.
The certainty of these images and the detail of such items on a mantelpiece
really appealed to me. The thick detail of Atkins language lends his writing
to prose poetry, often with asides of short sentences, to add whimsy and ever
more detail to the worlds he creates. His poetry shows rather than tells and
the language is simple and bared down to the bone, in his best poems. However
like all these collections it is not a completely effective in its entirety.
Atkins sometimes gets stuck using phraseology and images that confuse and
obscure the reader. Overall this is the best collection of poetry of all
three books but it leaves the reader wanting more. I will definitely wait for
his future collections with great anticipation.
All three books have their positive aspects and their own niche readership I
would think. In my opinion, only Atkins prose poetry allowed me to engage
with language and his poetic voice successfully. All have elements of the
absurd tradition about them, but they all have a distinct voice. One thing
comes out of reading these three collections for me as a writer of poetry as
well as an avid reader; poetry is at its best when it's accessible, direct
and different.
© Sam Murphy 2011
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