It is not altogether surprising that her work tends to group itself into sequences, variants and that sort of play upon a theme which engages the reader as much with the virtuosity of the performance as with the significance of the subject.
This particular collection is sub-titled '79 love poems' and, indeed, that is what we find. Not traditional love poems, mind you, but they have a lilting lyricism underneath their staccato and enigmatic playfulness:
It is hard to isolate an example, because I think the work needs to be seen as part of a total invention. Like Bach's 'The Art of Fugue', so much depends on the change of pace, mood and texture of individual pieces as against what precedes and what follows.
The Specifics of Love
I love shaking the bones in your arm
The humerus, radius and ulna.
...
I love your judgment: chaise-longue
In that spacious room of possibility
Filled with sun and poetry and music
And the pain you will not deny.
I love the little red hat
That makes you look like someone else
And the early fruit you pick for me
When I am overcome by ripeness ...
What could be said about the overall sense of the collection is that the individual poems, or variations, are discreet yet voluptuous: The reader (or at least, this reader) begins to look forward to just what the next poem will do, how it will add to the overall effect, or change it, or set up a whole new series of surprises and hurdles. There is something very enjoyable in such an exercise. It, of course, takes us from the object to the subject, and from the subject to the attitude. It plays with us, as it plays with its material.
The Mark
I knew if he ever died
I would strip the bed
And see the mark he had made there,
(with the weight
continual of his body,
as a body cannot ever lose that weight
even in sleep)
The mark he had made there ...
I knew if he ever died
That the mark
Would draw me,
Hold and enthral me
More than anything he had ever owned
Because he had never owned it
And unlike things you own
It was unavoidable.
M.T.C. Cronin seems to find in tone or voice, or twist of surprise, what we might otherwise expect in sticky image or punchy vibration. Not that there are not body parts and actions aplenty. As one reads, the big discovery is the poet's capacity to invent herself endlessly, to be playful, yes, but also to be guarded, or caught by surprise.
From Head of Crows/Body of Lime (On Leaving Love)
... I felt the earthquake in your heart
it was my premonition
and also belonged to others
who dreamed of you violently in the season of living
do not describe for them
how mountains became the weeping seeds
of flowers calling Spring
nor how oceans cried forgotten names of the hearth
do not utter the whisperings of mud
nor the secrets of volcanoes
carefully guarded by the same guardians
who attend the bloodstream
instead in your stillness be terrifying and arcane
allow the last light to be your tongue
reality your nose
and your brow the line of legend
if this is done I will flow downhill from your beauty
and in the language under the ice
and in the flames bury every word
spoken candidly of love and love you lost
There is always a real sense of 'making inventions' in this sequence, but the inventions offer variety and conviction and the language can vary from a sort of high-poetic allusiveness to the seemingly offhand and understated, without losing an essential ring of personality. It seems a long time since Australian poetry has witnessed a complete book quite so unselfconscious and yet so conscious of every nuance and invention. Love poems are not a territory comfortably explored in our literature.
I wonder what would be the response of someone if their own lover where to present them with My Lover's Back as a gift, or a hint? I think it would need to be a pretty sophisticated lover, someone not easily fobbed off with roses, chocolates or two tickets to the opera/football/Bridal Exhibition. On the other hand, it could be fun. It might even be an excuse to construct your own book of love poems. M.T.C. Cronin certainly sets a beguiling lead, with plenty of variations and some spice of anger, a twist of revenge, and lots of nice sexy insinuations.
(Reviewed by Thomas Shapcott, March 2004)
