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The Mower: New and Selected Poems by Andrew Motion

2009; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 83; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2009.0140

1945-8134

Matilda Saenz,

Poetry Analysis and Criticism

> H tu 2H *H < H QH o H reader if their significance is stated only in terms of what they have meant to the implied author.Unless, that is, the implied author isherself filled out as a person of interest,so that they matter throughher. In "Body Snatcher," the connec tion is quite vibrant: tohermother, thepoet asks, "When did your face grow into mine?" In other cases, as with a great-great-grandmother whom she probably did not know, thepoet feels and fillsout the con nection through that relative's poet ry and a photograph of her as a waitress, standing outside theBusy Bee Cafe inTonopah, Nevada. The successful memories are those told through narrative, poems that read as prose; the less successful are those where the essence of the remem bered individual is stated in terms of lessons learned or characteristics supposedly passed on to the speak er. In the latter cases, the photo graphs do help create the separate ness needed forfamily members too internalized.A photo ofher sister is particularly haunting, since ithints littleof the gypsy history and suf feringoutlined in the poem. These poems, in the "Home Oklahoma" section, form the heart of Work Is LoveMade Visible. The frame sections, "Rosasharn Reports" and "Mapping Desire," record the poet's excursions, geo graphical, intellectual, and personal. The persona, the implied author, one has to say, is less unified,more a series of disparate scenes, than the family members anchored by their photographs in the middle section. Perhaps that's as it must be. Who can say we know our selves? But unnecessary confusion occurswhen the firstsection is titled based on the first poem, "Rosasharn Reports . . . ," referencing Stein beck's famous character. The social iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiii and political concerns, the voice of that first poem are not sustained, though the other poems have their own integrity. "Mapping Desire," as the titleimplies, featuresan implied author now more in a place, travel ingmainly in relationships or what is seen from a more or less stable center. While Iwas interested in the lives of cats and Allen Ginsberg's Walt Whitman in this section, Iwas more and unexpectedly arrested by the personal moments of love and departure. Work Is Love is full of verbal pictures ofpeople variously at peace with their lives, at least as seen years later,and theiroffspringwho seem less in control of circumstances. The family stories anchor the volume and are thankfully not swept up and emptied out in a linearhistory, nor entirely internalized as a set of personal traitsin the implied author. The framing poems seem, on the other hand, to chart a journey of exploration, from different places and voices to a more centered open ingof a discrete self. W. M. H?gen Oklahoma BaptistUniversity Andrew Motion. The Mower: New and Selected Poems. Boston. David R. Godine. 2009. 128 pages. $16.95. isbn 978-1-56792-389-6 In his new collection of poetry, Andrew Motion?poet laureate of England in 1999?depicts an intrigu ing antithetical portrait of his par ents. Part 1, "Selected Poems" from 1976 to2002, includes highly literate poems that invoke thememory of his mother and in a style similar to Andrew Marvell. His mother's tragic riding accident that lefther comatose for ten years gives life to his continuing struggle to reconcile love and death. 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 Poetry and Family Photographs Not only ishis family a "dying race/7with recurrent images of his ghostly ancestors throughout, but also dying is the spirit of England itself, which Motion commemo rates in various ways. One strik ing poem is "Mythology/' which paints Princess Diana in her final moments entering the Paris tunnel: "breathless, hunted by your own quick hounds." Also included are Motion's tributes to poets, such as "Hull" for Phillip Larkin, "Goethe in thePark" for Goethe, "Talk about Robert Frost," and "The Grave for Rupert Brooke." "The Mower," the concluding poem of the "New Poems" part 2, invokes Motion's father, a veteran who gave his sons frequentambigu ous gestures. This ambiguity con tributed to thepoet's questioning of love and itspotential demise when met with a response such as his father's"slightly-lifted hand / either showing I should stay / or pushing me away." By his typical silence, he also impartedmore questions than answers about his difficulty inhan dling his wife's state and his dying love for a nonresponsive woman. In 721 World Today ^^^^ , the poem "Passing On," the broth 1 ers lament their relationship with , their father, for he was "difficult 1 always to satisfyand relax? / how i impossible to talk to, in fact,how 1 expert with silence." The Mower viv i idlydemonstrates Andrew Motion's , illuminating discovery of his own voice and his gift of voice to both , his father's generation and today's, 1 a gift that renders this collection i worthy of perusal. 1 Matilda Saenz i Mountain View College,Dallas i Pedra foguera: Antologia de poe , sia jove dels Paisos Catalans. Enric 1 Casasses, preface. Palma de Mallorca, i Spain. Federaci? Llull /Documenta Bale 1 ar. 2008. 201 pages. 7. isbn978-84 ! 96841-65-9 i "Pedra foguera" in Catalan means , "flint stone"?the actual stone, not 1 the cartoon. This is an anthol , ogy of young poets (under thirty) 1 from the Catalan-speaking lands, i which include not only Catalonia 1 but also Valencia in southeastern i Spain and the Balearic Islands as well (the anthology was published i inMallorca). , Pedra foguera is an anthology 1 of poets more than an anthology i of poems. There are twenty-eight 1 authors included, all of them repre i sented by a picture, a brief statement ' of poetics, an autobiographical note, i and three poems, most of which , were previously unpublished. But it 1 is,above all, an anthology fortheedi , tors: all themembers of the anthol 1 ogy's five-person editorial board are i included in the volume. An elder ' poet-performer, Enric Casasses? i one of themost respected voices of , the Catalan scene?celebrates their 1 appearance in his preface. , Poet Gabriel Ferrater used to 1 say that in a literary world as small as Catalan's, a single author was turned into a literary movement. Do theseyoung poets represent twenty eight literarymovements? By no means. If one were to take their poetics seriously, their definitions ofwhat poetry is range fromadoles cent naivete, such as Ivette Nadal's "Patiment + Filosofia = Poesia" (Suf fering+ philosophy = poetry) to the ironically intriguing, such as Pere Antoni Pons's: "La poesia consisteix a expressar els misteris i les passions de la vida sense fergaire el ridicul" (Poetry is a way to express life's pas sions and mysteries without making a foolof oneself). Some of the poets represent ed here, such as Pere Antoni Pons, Josep Pedrals, Marti Sales, Carles Rebassa, and Jaume C. Pons Alorda, have published several books, and their careers continue to show much promise. Pedrals and Rebassa, as well as others such as Bianca Llum Vidal and Clara Fontanet, often read and perform their work inpublic. On theone hand, ifthisanthol ogy makes anything clear, it is that contemporary Catalan poetry is alive, with plenty of young poets, some of them promising. On the other, for those poets included in Pedra Foguerawho have yet topub lish much of theirpoetry, threeshort poems is far too short a sample to perceive whether or not their flint will lightan enduring fire. Melcion Mateu New YorkUniversity Vera Schwarcz. Chisel of Remem brance: Poems. Simsbury, Connecticut. Antrim. 2009. ix+ 76 pages. $16. isbn 978-0-9817883-2-6 Vera Schwarcz is a Jewishhistorian and poet who has built a formidable reputation on an impressive list of publications, including the prize pedra foguera antologia de poesia jove dels paisos Catalans winning Bridge across Broken Time: Chinese and JewishCultural Memory (1999). Her poetry blends a wom an's sensitivity and imagination, a Jew's religious piety, the erudition of a multilingual scholar, and the deep sense of responsibility in a child ofHolocaust survivors. Chisel ofRemembrance, the titleof her lat est volume of poems, manifests a central theme in all of Schwarcz's work?namely, "the quest for remembrance." Schwarcz incorporates in these poems remembrances of her childhood and her family mem bers, of the sufferingsof the Jewish people in general, of ancient Juda ism, and of other ancient cultures, especially Chinese culture. These remembrances are more often than not intermingled, sometimes in unexpected ways. In "Hands," for instance, the poet addresses her grandfather, whom she never knew. He "died inbed, / a heart attack. / Jews did not just die / in 1944." The second sentence seems to be a casual comment on the first. The very casualness of its utterance cre ates a tensionwith theweight that lies behind the (under)statement. H^H September-October 2009 i73 I ...