i search my visions
looking for a pattern
which will include him i
search through the Book
of the Dead looking for
the nom de plume of a
living person ...(19)
Or in the midst of nature, using the pathetic fallacy to powerful effect:
"the wave noise is rush rush rush water particles rub against
each other each particle with its own skin the noise of
water meeting sand the fluid meeting the solid a partnership
between the drop of water that kisses a particular grain of
sand a greeting ("and if i walk", 40)
The forty two poems that make up this collection are all devoid of punctuation or capital letters except when citing references, using spacing and placement to define the rhythm of the work. This creates a sense of being in an altered space. The poems support this, and the imagery throughout is rich, heady and full of strong metaphor--the spellcoat of a life ("spell for my own death"), leaping into the pool of a new year like a salmon ("beltain eve"), or the amnesia of another focus ("a certainty of line"). Often though, the imagery goes too far, the plot is entirely absent, and the reader feels as though she or he has fallen into someone else's inarticulate dream:
sharp bits ultra sensitivity there is no definite pain
estranged strange stranger sensation of
feeling not definable while half waking half
sleeping in lungs a heavy weight remember
torment sits on chest inside this aware that
is him of nerves the feeling the feeling a
burdensome stone they are disarranged different
below throat in maybe sick maybe the feeling is
chest it feeds the skin internal state outside mind…(thinskin, 25)
It's almost impossible to penetrate poems like this, or to work out the meaning of the punctuation, alternating italics and non-italics, or the spaces - they are simply submerged too deeply, too confused in the chaos of another mind. The reader can only turn off, move forward, and hope that the next one will make more sense. It often does, as in "a certainty of line," where love and the loss of love once more makes itself a subject that Lloyd handles very well:
sometimes i remember the shape of their journeys
a glimpse of the underside in the evening I will
whisper the scent of your name and your skin
may burn with the touch of my hair (90)
Lloyd mingles mythology and legend, from the myrddin of the title to Sir Gawain or Arianrhod, with nature imagery that matches, from damp mossy forests of the past to the grey ocean seascape of the present, and combines this with a myriad of human emotions to form the poems. When it works, the pieces are complex objects where time and space, male and female, history and modernity are united, held together by a single human emotion like pain or frustration:
within the legacy of their footprints are fragile
answers and i have dreamed the vast stony desert
clearly the grit between my toes the hot smell of
dust in my nostrils the heat burning my inner
breath from the mountains this treasure may give
a lightness which changes line to image ("a certainty of line", 89)
There are many times however, when the poems get overloaded by the heavy imagery, the mythology mixes too many disparate tales, and the disconnect between external and internal worldS is too great, with no transition as in "soundings of the region of the summer stars:"
building blocks
imprinted
below surfaces
invisible ink
pregnant with possibility
window open white finelace curtain
waving gently
inside that point before fading her right profile
beckoned
for a last time
she wishes to be followed
to have a master of mind/grail guardian betray
presence but in this subtlety there is only the
imperceptible twitch of silver to guide eyes/mind/
translation of hallows
there
spiral pathway to crystal
tower
mirrored
her faces
pressed
against
its opaque
has vision of story directly penetrating memory/the
films within her head chivalry/courtly love/the
abrasion of poverty/the severed bleeding limbs of
loss slivers/realisations/translated (77-78)
The metaphors are too mixed here, fighting one another for prevalence. The reader needs a map, or perhaps the thread that goes with myrddins needle, to get us through this, and other similarly structured, densely obscure poems such as "as deconstruct/as seeking the bones" or "mabon/the one who will come.". This is a shame, because each individual metaphor that Lloyd uses, even in these pieces, is original, and has dramatic impact. Without the experimental baggage, and set in a poem with a more straightforward purpose, metaphors like "breathing into/out of lightsoundair" ("mabon/the one who will come") or "muddied undercurrents like rivers flow into undertow" ("still life with cross") could still work powerfully. Clearly Lloyd is a poet with significant talent, and one whose work can be confronting and beautiful when it isn't too inward looking.
(Reviewed by Magdalena Ball, June 2006)
