"Outsplendours" is a tiny wart in this splendid poem, Dave.
All the rest gives me a hierarchy of shivers with its direct, concise,
unexpected-then-"felt" comparisons ("moth......troubles the rag of flame",
"school-book.....two yellow halves", "The hearth ingots and incense", "A
cold star travels across the pane").
Objects do all the work, even summoning the "scythe-men"---a compound word
as if a compounded creature---that helps regenerate, prepares the soil. The
lamp, personal and universal, apprentices each season. [One is reminded of
Sharon Brogan's beautiful "Moon" series.]
Brown carefully avoids human "act-ers": "....is match struck to wick". The
passive voice; the phrase's subject is not a person.
One would be hard-pressed to succeed so grandly in such a little space.
Best,
Judy
2008/8/25 David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
> Yes and no. I always thought of him as a poet I would like to like:
> when he was alive I would look at each book hoping that this time ...
> some of the Ikey Faa stuff he did, yes, some of the collisions of
> primitive statement, yes, but ... the poem Jon has quoted, it's ok,
> but behind lurks the spectre of stock association.
>
> I thought the second stanza best. 'outsplendours' oh dear, no. He
> falls for Parnassian a lot (vide Hopkins on Tennyson for that term)
>
> If I compare Mackay Brown to Garioch then the latter gets my vote.
>
> One has to be very ginger in handling the notion of vanished worlds.
> One might end up in Akenfield.
>
> Best
>
> Dave
>
> 2008/8/25 Judy Prince <[log in to unmask]>:
> > Yes, it is damned good.
> >
> > 2008/8/25 Jon Corelis <[log in to unmask]>
> >
> >> Saw from a notice in the London Review of Books that The Collected
> >> Poems of George Mackay Brown is available in paperback (John Murray
> >> 2006). which I hadn't known about. I've admired his poetry in the
> >> past, so will have look at this. The notice in the LRB quotes a
> >> little:
> >>
> >> ---------
> >> The lamp is needful in spring, still,
> >> Though the jar of daffodils
> >> Outsplendours lamplight and hearthflames.
> >>
> >> In summer only near midnight
> >> Is match struck to wick.
> >> A moth, maybe, troubles the rag of flame.
> >>
> >> Harvest. The lamp in the window
> >> Summons the scythe-men.
> >> A school-book lies on the sill, two yellow halves.
> >>
> >> In December the lamp's a jewel,
> >> The hearth ingots and incense.
> >> A cold star travels across the pane.
> >> ---------
> >>
> >> That is damned good. I suppose though that world is gone now.
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> ===============================================
> >>
> >> Jon Corelis http://jcorelis.googlepages.com/joncorelis
> >>
> >> ===============================================
> >>
> >
>
>
>
> --
> David Bircumshaw
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>
|