{"id":2098,"date":"2019-01-08T17:45:17","date_gmt":"2019-01-08T17:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2098"},"modified":"2019-01-09T10:44:29","modified_gmt":"2019-01-09T10:44:29","slug":"review-frances-sackett-cradle-of-bones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2098","title":{"rendered":"Review – Frances Sackett, Cradle of Bones"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cradle of Bones<\/em>, The High Window Press, thehighwindowpress.com , 98 pp., \u00a310<\/p>\n

I\u2019m delighted that my friend Frances Sackett, with whom I discussed poetry over a number of years, has had this collection published by The High Window Press. Her first, The Hand Glass<\/em>, came out with Seren in 1996.<\/p>\n

Some people like collections to be organized around a single clearly determined theme. That\u2019s fine in a pamphlet but to my mind it easily becomes claustrophobic in longer volumes. I enjoy the freedom and variety you find in a body of work that\u2019s accumulated slowly, reflecting the diversity of a poet\u2019s interests and approaches as well as the underlying unity of their sensibility and preoccupations. Such a taste suits Cradle of Bones<\/em>: the poems were written over a number of years and take their impetus from stimuli of radically different kinds, but all very clearly emerge from the same mind. They combine sensuous, physical immediacy with spareness and restraint in a way that involves considerable technical skill and that in itself gives keen imaginative pleasure. However, the heart of Sackett\u2019s best poems is in the conjuring up of emotional impressions that shine through the physical ones and are felt all the more deeply for not being made explicit.\u00a0 I can show what I mean by looking at the first two stanzas of \u201cKinder Scout\u201d:<\/p>\n

The jagged edge of the wall
\noff the edge of the world,
\nwhere water flies up to a vapour
\nbeneath the hand of the wind.<\/p>\n

The lonely dirt road
\nshining away to the distance,
\nwhere under a falling mist
\ngrasses bind into sheaves.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the first of those stanzas, actual description only plays a small part in creating vivid sensuous impressions. Physical immediacy comes from sound as much as from image. The two lines describing the wall seem to be flung out, all phonetic hard edges. The \u201cj\u201d of \u201cjagged\u201d is picked up in \u201cedge\u201d (twice), and the heavy stresses on \u201cwall\u201d and \u201cworld\u201d are emphasised by the abrupt pauses after them. The repetition of \u201cedge of the\u201d gives a s of mounting intensity and insistence that climaxes in the phonetic repetitions between \u201cwall\u201d and \u201cworld\u201d. But the masterstroke comes with another and very subtle sound effect \u2013 \u201cworl\u201d repeats the sound effect of \u201cwall\u201d very closely but as it expands into \u201cworld\u201d there\u2019s a sudden sense of release, of the widening vistas beyond the wall. This is a point of transition because the next two lines are dominated by gentler stresses and softer, blurrier sounds, like the fricative \u201cf\u201d and \u201cv\u201d, in which you almost hear the wind. You might say that the sounds of the first two lines echo stone and the sounds of lines three and four embody watery mist and wind. There\u2019s no lingering on description of the wind, but again we get a vivid impression of its brawny, blustery activity by sound, rhythm, and the strength of the verb \u201cflies\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the second stanza there\u2019s a change of focus which I find very beautiful. As far as what is explicitly said is concerned, it simply continues the description of the external, physical scene. However, it seems to me that the imaginative focus has decisively shifted from the physical scene to the emotions it provokes in the observer. These are complex, subtle, shimmering and implicit, so it would be wrong to try to try to spell them out too precisely. The starting point, of course, is the way the loneliness attributed to the road seems a reflection of the feelings of the speaker, but beyond that there\u2019s a delicate interplay of positive and negative feelings, with joy at the beauty of the scene on the one hand and on the other an apparent wistfulness at possibilities not explored, the road not taken. Though the imagery has been full of dynamism and process the poet seems to feel herself excluded from it, a mere bystander and observer.<\/p>\n

I hope that\u2019s enough to show the sensitivity of Sackett\u2019s expression and how skilfully she uses sound and rhythm to convey emotion. Such tacit communication seems to me to penetrate the imagination more deeply and to take a more intimate possession of it for not being explicit. I think such an approach reflects an instinctive sensitivity to the nature of feeling, which can only be coarsened and violated by direct expression.<\/p>\n

Whether prompted by artistic or moral considerations, there\u2019s an additional reticence in poems involving other people. Here too, the feelings expressed in the poem are precipitated by sound and sensuous image rather than directly stated. Wider narrative is almost completely suppressed. In this example, the title is all the context we\u2019re given but it powerfully shapes our reactions to everything that follows:<\/p>\n

SECOND WIFE<\/p>\n

He walks her once around their garden
\nand as she touches roses
\nthere is a sudden, twisting fall;
\na velvet touch, but cool as evening.<\/p>\n

The bushes circle her with shadow
\nas though their Autumn pruning knew
\njust how she\u2019d stand and take this garden in,
\nand take this man away.<\/p>\n

He is dressing her now
\nin the good clothes he kept;
\nmoulding her frame with his hands \u2013<\/p>\n

that only leads to shedding clothes,
\nas the willow taps its long hair
\nhysterically at the windowpane.<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t want to violate the mystery of this poem by laying out my own thoughts about the cross-currents of feeling that stir under almost every image, given the title. I will say that that its combination of reticence and mystery with a kind of explosive frankness seems to me a remarkable achievement. I\u2019d also like to give particular mention to the beautiful love poems \u201cNight Call\u201d, and \u201cTouch\u201d.<\/p>\n

A whole section of the book is given over to poems about works of art. This can be dangerous territory; such poems can end up seeming too dependent on the works they describe to stand on their own feet. Only two of Sackett\u2019s seem to me to fall into that trap \u2013 \u201cTwo Faces of a Daughter\u201d, after Millais, and \u201cThe Lancashire Madonna\u201d, about a statue outside Manchester Cathedral. The key to the success of the others is that they don\u2019t rely on transcription of the visual contents of the work, they centre (again) on the skilful evoking of feeling, whether by finding poetic ways of expressing what\u2019s in the work itself or exploring the poet\u2019s reactions to it. \u201cGirl Reading a Letter at an Open Window\u201d, after Vermeer, takes off from Vermeer\u2019s famous painting, first by bringing the girl out of the painting to tell her story, then returning her to it with the stinging and exactly timed conclusion<\/p>\n

I will stand here forever
\nand never again notice how
\nthe sun floods through the window,
\ngilding everything with lies.<\/p>\n

Without Sackett\u2019s saying anything explicitly, we\u2019re invited to meditate quite widely both on amorous and sexual relations (including the pathos of separation in those days of years-long voyaging) and also on the relation between life and art (from the girl\u2019s point of view that last line expresses the bitterness of betrayal; at the same time, as a comment on the difference between art and life it brings into consideration art\u2019s power to enhance reality, remaking our brazen world as a golden one, as Sir Philip Sidney put it). Part of the charm of this section is in the very different perspectives on life that the different poems offer, or, I\u2019d suggest, the different takes on life that different works of art allow Sackett to express, in very different styles. Compare the rhythms of two very different poems inspired by paintings by Gauguin, the voluptuously caressing, incantatory listing of \u201cEt l\u2019or de leurs corps\u201d with the nervous tension of \u201cThe Spirit of the Dead Watches\u201d. The first starts<\/p>\n

And the gold of their bodies
\nAnd the musk of their skin
\nAnd the sleek of their hair
\nAnd the sloe of their eyes<\/p>\n

The second<\/p>\n

I can feel her fear
\nas the dark one watches.
\nShe looks for me
\nbut I keep to the shadows.<\/p>\n

“I can feel her fear”. Ian Pople, quoted on the back cover, comments on the \u201cprofound empathy with her subjects\u201d in Sackett’s poems. I think that is key to their sensitive humanity and their ability to lend themselves to very different feelings according to their occasions. I think the person speaking those lines from “The Spirit of the Dead” should be understood as both the artist painting the picture, and the poet looking at it and imagining herself as that artist. Again, there’s a very delicate interplay of implicit reflections on the contradictory demands on the artist to empathize and to keep distance. The keeping of distance gives Sackett’s poems their restraint and the precision of their art. It implies a precious quality of respect on her part, both for the reader, who must be allowed space to respond to the poems on their own terms and for the poem’s subjects, which so often involve the feelings and experiences of other people. At the same time, empathy brings her close to those feelings and allows her to give them a renewed life in the poems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cradle of Bones, The High Window Press, thehighwindowpress.com , 98 pp., \u00a310 I\u2019m delighted that my friend Frances Sackett, with whom I discussed poetry over a number of years, has had this collection published by The High Window Press. Her first, The Hand Glass, came out with Seren in 1996. Some people like collections to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-frances-sackett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2098"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2102,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098\/revisions\/2102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}