The poem does communicate the sense of the poet alone in a wilderness but these New-Agey, non-specific phrases weaken rather than strengthen the poet's communication of her vision. By far the strongest lines in this piece occur when Hughes simply describes something plainly - a child responding to the seashore:
"Just a little way down
-- said the child --
if you dig,
there are crabs!
and water runs into the hole",
but this vivid description is immediately undermined by the following cloyingly 'poetic' lines:
'Radiant beauty in her face --
I saw the human soul
transient as a flower'.
This description of a child would be far more effective without the poet's commentary.
"Drifting" is more successful, evoking the sea, and memories of almost drowning while spearfishing near Point Lonsdale, and "Octopus", in its brevity, is also pithy. But throughout the collection, the reliance on exclamation marks to create emphasis - instead of letting the words do the work - becomes quite irritating (e.g. 'Crabs!', 'Stingrays!). Some poems read as if they are meant for performance to a young audience; they are conversational rather than dense with metaphor. In some instances, they read almost like adolescent exercises in self-discovery, complete with easy rhymes:
'Memories!
Bright images!
Brushstrokes in my mind upon a screen
Memories
Dark images
For many years I've wondered what they mean --
wondered
what is there
behind the screen --
who am I?
and who have I been?' (Memories, p.19).
So many statements are posed as questions to which the poet has no answers, (canvassing such nebulous subjects as the meaning of life and death, intimations of depression and joy, and the possibility of past lives and future incarnations), and these questions begin to feel like an affectation in their frequency: (e.g. 'Am I a flame / guttering in the wind?'; 'Where do my thoughts / come from?'; 'What is distance?'; 'What do I see?'). The words 'infinite' and 'infinity' also appear often, like a kind of shorthand for the unknowable (and, ultimately, indescribable).
"Part 2, The Corridor of Mirrors", is, overall, more successful, but still contains the hallmarks of a novice poet in search of a voice. On page 49, 'The problem is I don't know what to write' reads like an exercise in automatic writing from a poetry workshop. In "Autumn" Hughes again regales us in repetition and easy rhyme:
'this pinprick existence
sees nothing --
nothing before
and this is its blessing --
to play as a child
not hearing
the whirlpool's roar
the whirlpool pulls all
that comes
to its shore
this pinprick existence --
what is it for?
born of the Earth
and nothing more?' (Autumn)
in a circular fashion that is, ultimately, unsatisfying. "Sun God" (p.54), a description of a sculpture in the British Museum, provides a more concrete subject, but still it doesn't move beyond mere description. "To my Mother", "At a Family Reunion", "Cormorant", and "Poppy" possess more subtext and, being less ambitious, work quite well. But I could have done without "To my Cat", which doesn't possess enough detail to make the subject matter of interest to anyone but the poet. The title poem comes at the end and again relies on turgid rhymes to answer the question 'Who casts the illusion / I don't see through?'
from the Corridor of Mirrors is concerned with silence, philosophical conundrums, and descriptions of the sea and garden flowers. It is the ponderous poetry of a circumspect life that's lived in a very small world, seemingly unaware of the bigger conundrums facing humanity. In the back cover blurb, poet Kevin Taylor writes: 'Her work is a struggle to find words that are adequate to describe what she sees and feels'. From the evidence of this collection, this struggle is far from over and needs to be completed before again attempting publication in a collection.
(Reviewed by Liz Hall-Downs, June 2006)
