{"id":2193,"date":"2019-08-15T16:46:29","date_gmt":"2019-08-15T16:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2193"},"modified":"2019-08-15T16:53:33","modified_gmt":"2019-08-15T16:53:33","slug":"jamie-mckendrick-the-carved-buddha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2193","title":{"rendered":"Jamie McKendrick, “The Carved Buddha”"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Carved Buddha<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Within the lotus bud of sandalwood that needs
\nto be pried open by a thumbnail the Buddha sits
\ncross-legged on a flower exuding the odour of resin
\nunder a light coating of gold leaf.<\/p>\n

It belonged to Mrs Ogilvie from Aberdeen;
\nwhen she opened the perfect fit of the upper lid
\nI knew that nothing made by the hand of man
\ncould hold a candle to it. Its beauty blazed<\/p>\n

but quietly, a tiny inexhaustible thing.
\nI instantly forgot the ban on brazen
\nidols, and remembered the mustard seed.<\/p>\n

You could not guess what the small plain
\ncapsule concealed, and when you saw
\nyou guessed another light burnt from within.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I find this sonnet a remarkable achievement, beautiful, haunting and unsettling in ways that are sometimes easy to set down but ultimately rather mysterious. Like Shelley\u2019s \u201cOzymandias\u201d, or like the Buddha in its sandalwood capsule, it achieves an extraordinary sense of vastness within its small spaces. I should probably simply leave its blazes of imaginative power, its huge, smooth changes of gear and the feline subtleties of the speaker\u2019s tone to speak for themselves but analysis brings its own pleasure.<\/p>\n

I said \u201cspaces\u201d rather than \u201cspace\u201d because one of the things that makes the poem work so well is how formed its separate stanzas are, how strong the sense of coming to a point of rest and completion at the end of each one is. In the first quatrain this is achieved partly by making the stanza a single measured sentence, involving what Yeats called \u201ca complete coincidence between period and stanza\u201d. Within that sentence there\u2019s an intricate play of phonetic echoes and contrasts that it would be redundant to explore in detail. There\u2019s also a very subtle form of couplet rhyming which I\u2019m sure works on us even if we don\u2019t consciously notice it. This is a rhyming not of sounds<\/em> but of parts of speech<\/em> \u2013 the two verbs \u201cneeds\u201d and \u201csits\u201d followed by the two nouns \u201cresin\u201d and \u201cleaf\u201d. But these words are just the completion of larger echoes \u2013 the whole phrase \u201csandalwood that needs\u201d is balanced and completed by \u201cthe Buddha sits\u201d and \u201codour of resin\u201d by \u201ccoating of gold leaf\u201d.<\/p>\n

Having set our expectations to the idea of the stanza as a unit of thought, McKendrick gives this pattern a magical twist at the end of the second quatrain. The coherence of the stanza is proclaimed by the rhyme scheme, with its alternating half rhymes \u2013 \u201c-deen\u201d, \u201clid\u201d, \u201cman\u201d, \u201cblazed\u201d and by what you might call the self-sufficiency of the thought. It\u2019s also given definition as a unit by having a different rhyme scheme to the previous stanza \u2013 rhyming by sound instead of parts of speech and in an abab pattern instead of in couplet pairs. The second half of line eight doesn\u2019t need anything added to it to make a powerful statement. The whole stanza seems complete, rounded, shapely, sufficient in itself, but instead of stopping there McKendrick goes on. The effect, it seems to me, is to make that extraordinary gear change to \u201cbut quietly\u201d feel like a new beginning.<\/p>\n

With the two tercets that complete the poem McKendrick returns to the coincidence between period and stanza. The way the second both starts and finishes a thought is obvious.<\/p>\n

Emphasis on the stanzas as self-contained units creates imaginative space, inviting us to linger over each in turn, enjoying their sounds and the precision of their phrasing, slowing our reading down in a way that lets us take in the rapidly moving, multiple suggestions that shimmer within them. However, even as we focus closely on one stanza at a time a larger pattern is forming at the back of our minds. Rhymes link the stanzas or call across from one stanza to another. I won\u2019t work through them in detail but it\u2019s obvious that some of the rhymes between<\/em> stanzas are stronger than the rhymes within<\/em> them \u2013 \u201cblazed\u201d and \u201cbrazen\u201d, the reverse rhyme of \u201cneed\u201d and \u201c-deen\u201d and the further rhyme with \u201cseed\u201d, for example. It seems to me that the co-existence of these complementary patterns is another thing that gives the poem its imaginative largeness, its sense of working on our perceptions in many different ways at once.<\/p>\n

Contrasts of tone and the co-presence of different, contrasting imaginative worlds are vital too. The idea of the tiny box containing the Buddha parallels the old metaphor of poem as container, a house of as many rooms as there are stanzas, or lines or images. No, that\u2019s too abstract. When I read this poem, everything it says about the tiny box and the Buddha seems to describe the experience of the reading itself, of vast ideas and rapidly changing feelings unrolling shining out of the small box of the poem.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll just jot down a few of the different directions we\u2019re pulled in, the different worlds we cross as we read.<\/p>\n

One contrast is between different poetic styles. Those intricate patterns of sound that I\u2019ve mentioned create a sense of lyrical beauty that fits with the religious subject and express the speaker\u2019s wonder. They are set against a quite different tone of prosaic literalism: \u201cpried open by a thumbnail\u201d and \u201cIt belonged to Mrs Ogilvie from Aberdeen\u201d. The interplay is elusive and open-ended \u2013 for one reader, the prosaic details will act as a foil to the lyrical beauty, giving it sharper definition. For another, the same contrast will ground the lyricism and religious feeling in actuality, make them more solidly and really a part of the world we know. For another it will ironically undercut the lyricism. I think it does all those things, keeping the whole experience alive and unsettled in our minds.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a subliminal play on words that makes the poem\u2019s statements shimmer not with double meanings but with fleeting suggestions of additional meanings behind the main ones. \u201cLight\u201d and \u201cleaf\u201d both seem to me to work in this way. Literally, of course, \u201cunder a light coating of gold leaf\u201d is an exact physical description of the decoration of the carving. This meaning stays solidly in our minds, but others bud off it as flickering mental presences: on the one hand a metaphorical or spiritual image of the Buddha as clothed in light (which, after all, is what the gold leaf is there to suggest), on the other humorous associations of light clothing and DIY house painting. And the double meaning of \u201cleaf\u201d subliminally links it with the bud and the flower, so that we see the Buddha in the forest. But perhaps I\u2019m making this sound too solemn. There\u2019s also \u2013as so often in McKendrick\u2019s work \u2013 a sense of sheer play, a puckish relishing of these verbal coincidences, the biggest of which, after all, is the way \u201cbud\u201d is contained within \u201cBuddha\u201d. \u00a0And of course delight in that isn\u2019t confined to the coincidence itself. There\u2019s an aesthetic pleasure in contemplating the way the relationship of the words<\/em> \u201cbud\u201d and \u201cBuddha\u201d is the mirror image of the relationship between the things<\/em> \u2013 the word \u201cBuddha\u201d contains the word \u201cbud\u201d, the physical \u201cbud\u201d contains the Buddha. I think it plays on ideas of God as at once the heart of the world and containing it, but I\u2019ll leave that thought to the side for now.<\/p>\n

I said \u201cIt belonged to Mrs Ogilvie from Aberdeen\u201d was a prosaic line. I was referring to its factualism and lack of sonic patterning but in context, in contrast with the more lyrical lines, it takes on an evocativeness and poetry of its own, suggesting an atmosphere, bringing echoes of the Aberdonian accent, setting her Scottish interior against the Eastern outdoors of lotus flowers and gilded statues, making us wonder who Mrs Ogilvie is, how she obtained the carving, and in the next line why the speaker was with her being shown the tiny treasure. Tiny film clips of the scene seem to flash in our minds. We see their two heads bending over it before in a flash moving into the interior world of the speaker\u2019s wonder at what he sees.<\/p>\n

References to different religions extend the imaginative field of the poem in different directions. Complementing the Buddhist carving there are Christian and Judaic references. I\u2019m not sure how specific the allusion to the banning of brazen idols is \u2013 there are various denunciations of such idolatry in the Old Testament \u2013 but the reference to the mustard seed echoes the gospels of Mark, Luke and Matthew; in Matthew\u2019s version of the parable<\/p>\n

The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field:<\/p>\n

Which indeed is the least of all seeds; but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.<\/p>\n

Poems think for themselves and think in conversation with other poems. Whether McKendrick had this specifically in mind or not, \u201cNothing made by the hand of man \/ could hold a candle to it\u201d ignites with a moment in Robert Lowell\u2019s \u201cBeyond the Alps\u201d when he contemplates the impact of the Pope\u2019s making Mary\u2019s assumption into heaven a part of Catholic dogma \u2013 \u201cThe lights of science couldn\u2019t hold a candle \/ to Mary risen \u2013 at one miraculous stroke\u201d. McKendrick\u2019s poem reaches out for Lowell\u2019s and a force field is created between them setting up a flow of thoughts which will vary from reader to reader.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll say no more about that now because I really have been murdering to dissect. But there\u2019s one more thing I want to mention as contributing to the poem\u2019s sense of largeness and that\u2019s an ingenious feature of how it\u2019s made. It emphasises the powerful shifts of gear that I\u2019ve mentioned. As the poem develops it seems to change genre. We start with a timeless, placeless contemplative stanza that seems like the opening of a meditation \u2013 something that will be structured like any number of sonnets, the kind that essentially tell us about what the subject of the poem \u2013 in many sonnets that would be the poet\u2019s mistress is<\/em> and what it or she means to the poet. The second and third stanzas shift to narrative, like Shelley\u2019s \u201cOzymandias\u201d (changing gear almost instantly from the anecdotal triviality of \u201cit belonged to Mrs Ogilvie from Aberdeen\u201d to a tone of awe befitting an experience of life-changing intensity). And then there\u2019s another striking shift, from the I<\/em> point of view to a you<\/em> that pulls the reader in imaginatively. Approaching the subject from such different angles it\u2019s almost as if we were reading three poems at once.<\/p>\n

And the more I think about it the more Shelley\u2019s \u201cOzymandias\u201d seems to me an imaginative presence in the poem, so that the vastness in a tiny space of the miniature Buddha contrasts with the nothingness of the gigantic statue of Ozymandias, the modesty and selflessness of the Buddha with the vaunting arrogance of the Pharaoh:<\/p>\n

Ozymandias<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>
\nI met a traveller from an antique land
\nWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
\nStand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
\nHalf sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
\nAnd wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
\nTell that its sculptor well those passions read
\nWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
\nThe hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
\nAnd on the pedestal these words appear:
\n“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
\nLook on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
\nNothing beside remains. Round the decay
\nOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
\nThe lone and level sands stretch far away.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I would like to thank Jamie McKendrick for giving me permission to post his sonnet with my comments. He hasn\u2019t seen what I\u2019ve written, or discussed the poem with me. I can only hope I haven\u2019t misinterpreted it or overinterpreted it too grossly.<\/p>\n

You can find links to my reviews of McKendrick’s Anomaly<\/em><\/a>, Selected Poems<\/em><\/a> and Out There<\/em><\/a> by clicking on the titles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Carved Buddha   Within the lotus bud of sandalwood that needs to be pried open by a thumbnail the Buddha sits cross-legged on a flower exuding the odour of resin under a light coating of gold leaf. It belonged to Mrs Ogilvie from Aberdeen; when she opened the perfect fit of the upper lid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jamie-mckendrick"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2193"}],"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=2193"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2198,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2193\/revisions\/2198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}