verbs sliced by holocaust waves, crushed shells
of adjectives
(from About Islands)
But such glimpses are rare. This is a far tamer collection than Peter Lloyd's, a compendium of short intimate poems tenderly eliciting slightly more well-worn responses from us, like the smell of an old cardigan. For me, there are too many narrative cul-de-sacs in these poems, obtuse references and sudden flights of fancy that add nothing to the poem but an air of stale whimsy.
This is a shortcoming only exacerbated by the poet's tendency to rhyme off his poems, forcing a pattern rather belatedly and making this reviewer suspect the poet's musical ear. I found myself reading and re-reading some of these "rhymed off" poems searching for assonance, however oblique, but to no avail. These poems, however, do roll beautifully off the tongue and are infused with their own homespun wisdom which only at times becomes slightly cloying. There is nothing particularly spellbinding or original here, but nor is there meant to be. To my great surprise I have found myself thumbing through this book relishing the primal tones:
The greying man is sitting silently.
His deck-chair fronts the sea. The eyes
stare as if he's looking nowhere you
or I, painter or witness, can identify.
A scarf is twirled around his throat
like an old-school rainbow drab and faded.
If he wriggles at all, no one notices.
Expectant sea-birds, acquisitive, competitive,
are beaks in waiting. There are signs
the sitter's lunch is about to be served:
fish might be too much to expect, but crusts
are acceptable to predators; even the last
crumbs, devoured quickly one by one.
("Sitting for a Portrait")
Poetry is, of course, about much more than clever word play, and while Syd Harrex seems well aware of this, like a batsman, his weaknesses force him to play too often to his strengths. There is a definite lack of ideas in these poems, and hence of any innate drama or dynamism, forcing the poet to compensate with his moderate ear for language.
"Late Afternoon Light Over the Lake" is a clever enough conceit, but it is hardly illuminating, except perhaps to this reviewer who sees what the poet is reaching for only to end up with a fistful of air:
as we sit here hearing our minds grinding,
while the birds swoop in and out with brains
in their beaks like writhing remnants of worms
The message here would seem to be that all thought comes to nought, but it is merely a clever little quip, it turns no light on the subject, on the dark shadow of every thought, every breath, every smile. If you are going to laugh at life, do it properly. Subtle allusions are all very well, but unless you know what you are doing it can begin to sound like someone mumbling to themselves with no thought for who might be listening.
We seem to have brushed against the very crux of the matter here. In reaching out to his audience, the poet needs to weld the demands of whatever templates the culture has set with the achingly intimate act of expression itself. How far to push those templates in order to tailor them to your story before the effort gets murky? There are no easy answers, of course, which is what makes being an artist such bloody hard work and the whole thing so compelling and timeless.
Harrex, however, has erred on the side of caution. At times these poems struck me as so intimate, so peppered with sly references and acute innuendo, that I began to wonder if they were actually meant for me to read. The Cambridge Poets would often leave me with the same impression, which I suspect is Syd Harrex's pedigree.
That said, there is a tenderness in these poems, a winsomeness, that endears them to the reader. Poems such as "Shoeless Evenings" bring a warm smile with their:
... shoeless sunsets,
& paddling ampersand footprints, & this
phosphorescent tug and incandescent sigh
Very much poems of place full of the poet's love and appreciation of the world around him and those who people it, and that, after all, can't be a bad thing. For people who turn to poetry for occasional solace, there is much in this book to delight and distract. It makes few claims and fewer demands, but has an honesty about it that will touch the more open hearts among us.
(Reviewed by Justin Lowe, June 2007)
