I think I have mentioned before that a friend and I have a regular postal poetry exchange. This year we are choosing to read poets we have not read before who are still living and whose poetry tends to focus on nature in some way. I’ve had the pleasure of discovering some wonderful poets including Brenda Hillman and Joseph Massey. When I learned that Helen McDonald wrote poetry and that she has a book called Shaler’s Fish I was excited. I might be one of the few people left who has not read H is for Hawk and even though I plan to read it eventually I thought reading her poetry first might be both fun and a trip off the beaten path of popularity.
I generally consider myself a pretty good reader of poetry. I might not always get every allusion or style trick but heck, I don’t always get everything when I am reading a novel either. But I have confidence. And just like some novels are not my cuppa, some poetry collections turn out to not be my cuppa either. Shaler’s Fish pretty much left me scratching my head from start to finish.
McDonald’s style is dense and associative and if you lose one jump the whole poem ceases to make any sense. Sometimes I would get lost on the second or third line. Other times I would think, woo-hoo I am almost at the end of this poem and it still makes sense and then wham! And I’d finish the last few lines wondering what had happened and where I had gone wrong. In cases like these rereading is generally a helpful tactic. That is one of the great things about poetry, they are generally fairly short and easy to read multiple times. Unfortunately most of the time rereading yielded little to no results and I would give up on the poem, moving on and leaving it behind only partially understood or still completely lost in a fog.
Here, for instance, are a few lines from a poem called “On Approaching Natural Colours”
That straight line doth not contain everything I know
& everything I have not yet understood. It is not an is,nor a cline not a bar, a predicament. The parliament
of fowls & the wheel of clouds, clouds’ sakeWhere it sickens again, meaning to place it for hours
& an ill wind picks at heroism, as a fence of flowersagainst charms, charm.
See how the associations flow and how it makes sense in pieces but then when I try to put it all together all I can say is, huh? You can see she likes words like “doth” for no particular reason that I can discern other than maybe she likes the way it sounds. She also likes obscure words that had me going to the dictionary so often it made me tired and I eventually gave up on even trying. That probably says more about me than it does the poetry. But at what point does a reader get to say, these poems are unnecessarily dense and abstruse and why don’t you just say it plain once in awhile?
Sometimes there would be some startling and beautiful lines like this from “Poem”
My pen crumples into a swan, it is singing
inauthenticate myth, an not of future splendour
I am glad.
Or this from “letter to america”
looking for a small world in the uninhabitable air
trying to extinguish some deeper desire for firewith something as cold and as hard and as temporary as flight
& what you were hoping is that the air would recolonise you
recognise you and welcome you into the sunlight
and all would be forgiven.
But so often these moments of beauty and clarity are surrounded by the impenetrable that I can’t say I truly liked even one complete poem. McDonald makes the reader work hard and I am not opposed to that if I get a payoff for all my work. And since I never once felt like I came close to understanding a single poem, I ended up feeling like my efforts were worthless.
I am assuming, given the popularity of H is for Hawk, that her prose is very different than her poetry. Let this serve as a caution if you see Shaler’s Fish at the library and think her poetry will be like her memoir. And if you have read her poetry, please let me know what you thought of it and whether you have made sense out of any of it. I will be glad to know your secret!
There is nothing as difficult as writing simply. I’m not inspired to go read her poetry, after these excerpts. The use of “doth” seems pretentious.
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Jeanne, true, but I didn’t get the impression she here dense style is because she was unable to be simpler. Funny, I never felt like “doth” was pretentious, only one more layer of obscurity.
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Agree with Jeanne re the “doth”. That first poem looked a bit like she was channelling Gerard Manley Hopkins, at least the last line “against charms, charm” has his ring. But, oh dear, this looks like way too much work for me.
Her prose is WAY more accessible than that!
(BTW I’m on the road again for a couple of weeks so may not get much blogging done besides trying to write my own, but I will be back!!)
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whisperinggums, it’s funny I never got the impression she was being pretentious, just adding more layers to her dense style. I am going to have to read some Hopkins because his name seems to keep popping up all over the place in the last few months probably because of all the nature poetry I’ve been reading! Glad McDonald’s prose is so much more accessible.
Safe and happy travels!
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Oh yes, do read Hopkins if you don’t know him. You can find his work easily on the web – As kingfishers catch fire is a favourite of mine, as is Spring and fall. But there are many that I love. Talk about poetry feeling great in the mouth
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I’ve read a few of his poems but not many. So now I have some good reading to look forward to! 🙂
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The prose is very different. I have to say I really like the shape and feel of her poetry in the mouth, though. And I like the not-clearly-about-something-ness, because it means that a reader can be more creative than contemporary poets usually allow us to be. The poetry seems atmospheric, not strictly logical or linear – I’ve got some time for that.
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Elle, yes, you are right about that, McDonald’s poetry does feel good in the mouth even if it makes my head hurt! I get what you’re saying about atmospheric and not-being-about-somethingness, but while I was reading the poems they seemed like they wanted to be about something, that there was an idea or something going on and it was frustrating to not be able to get inside that.
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Fair enough, for sure. And sometimes I find that my feelings about a poem/poet change – depending on the day, the weather, how much sleep I’ve had…
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heh, I hear you regarding feelings about a poem/poet changing. so many factors affect how we read something.
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Oh probably not for me, I’m used to analyzing poetry but if multiple rereadings leave someone as experienced as you confused then nope. Haven’t read her novel, but interesting that she writes both and in such different styles. Must say, I do love that cover though 🙂
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Bina, you never know, maybe something about her poetry will click with you. The cover is beautiful, isn’t it? At least the collection had that going for it! 😉
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Those are some lovely excerpts. I love that you share poetry with friend. I’m going to have to try to talk one of my best friends into doing this too! 🙂
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Iliana, glad you like the excerpts. You have to talk to your friend! I can’t tell you how much fun it is exchanging poetry through the mail 🙂
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No, don’t worry, you are not the last person to read H is for Hawk–I have yet to read it either but I am looking forward to it. I didn’t realize she also wrote poetry–cool! How fun, too, that you are having a poetry/postal exchange. I like that idea–do you mail books back and forth in the mail?
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Danielle, it is nice to know I am not alone with H is for Hawk! Since my poetry partner is Cath, we don’t mail books, that would get pretty expensive. We usually choose a poem or two and enclose it with a note every month to month and a half. Good motivation for keeping poetry in my reading pile and always fun to have some in my mailbox 🙂
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i have read excerpts but what i read was beautifully abstruse, her use of horticultural references as synonyms for psychological states, or emotion, or the effect of one thing upon another, shows a skill for association, which though lost on many, unless you do some work, is rewarding when you do look up the reference to reveal the layers. i think, yes, Macdonald is being obscure, but i also think she is being evasive, it isn’t always a comforting exercise to wear your heart on your sleeve, but you may like to flirt with it, so you get a henna tattoo.
i always marginally agreed with Dylan Thomas when asked about the meaning of his poems, explaining it wasn’t for him to supply meaning but for the reader to discover it for themselves. this is the extremity of obfuscation, but i think Macdonald offers plenty for us to get a good idea of what she is driving at: a fluid, elegant & visceral treatment of her mind in relation to nature, but a mind that knows the accurate, man-made terminology, which says quite a good deal in itself about our relationship with nature.
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