{"id":2291,"date":"2020-04-07T09:56:57","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T09:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2291"},"modified":"2020-04-07T09:56:57","modified_gmt":"2020-04-07T09:56:57","slug":"the-rain-barrel-by-frank-ormsby-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2291","title":{"rendered":"The Rain Barrel by Frank Ormsby – review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Untroubled\u2019, the first poem in The Rain Barrel<\/em>, is a kind of brief resume of the whole volume, and also I think one of its best poems. It stands out both for the speed with which it makes the mind move and for the way that even as it does so it sustains a powerful sensation of stillness, of remembered domestic serenity suspended between a remote violent past and violence to come:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Caesar is flattening Gaul
\nby the light of our Tilley.
\nMy father has slept
\nwith his mouth open
\nsince the beginning of the war.
\nMy mother is on a cleaning campaign
\nin the furthest corners of her empire.
\nThe frozen centre of the night
\nis a dog\u2019s yowl released between hills.
\nI am translating from the Latin.
\nIt is 1962, JFK smiles from our mantelpiece.
\nBefore the decade is out
\nwe will fear the unmarked car in the lay-by,
\nthe live device thrown into the garden.
\nBut on this quiet night
\nlogs are burning out in the stove
\nand a dog in the hills
\nis fashioning a winter elegy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The deep model for this poem seems to be Derek Mahon\u2019s \u2018The Snow Party\u2019. Ormsby\u2019s poem traces a similar arc but with a very different setting and atmosphere. Rapid changes of gear are obvious from the beginning, with the time-and-space jump between Caesar\u2019s Gallic wars and the Ireland of 1962, where young Ormsby is doing his Latin homework: \u2018Caesar is flattening Gaul \/ by the light of our Tilley\u2019. Within those two short lines there\u2019s a swirl of changing tones, not only moving forward but also reflecting back; the word \u2018flattening\u2019 becomes particularly apposite when we realise that we\u2019re seeing things from the perspective of a boy. Then we settle to a more earthy comedy as the father\u2019s open-mouthed sleep is presented as if it\u2019s lasted all through the Gallic wars rather than just through the son\u2019s homework time. With the jump forward to the Troubles, security and humour vanish altogether, until we return to 1962 in the last lines. Of course a poem whose tone is so volatile and whose meanings arise so much through juxtaposition, implication and imaginative suggestion may speak very differently to different readers, or to the same reader at different times, and that is its beauty and strength. The main elements are established with strong, clear strokes but can come together in the mind in many different ways. For me, the contrast with the Troubles intensifies the memory of peace. It becomes an island of calm framed by storms, earthed and saved from sentimentality by humour. However, I can imagine that for a different reader, knowledge of Irish history and of the old wounds that the Troubles reopened might undermine the supposed idyll. For such a reader, Caesar\u2019s wars may evoke British imperial oppression, the reference to the mother\u2019s cleaning campaign, which seems light hearted to me, may be poisoned by its suggestion of wars of suppression and ethnic cleansing, the father\u2019s open-mouthed sleep may suggest dumb obliviousness to the underlying realities of the situation … and so on.<\/p>\n

Different elements of this poem recur throughout the volume, the Troubles being recalled in a number of the poems about the lost graves of murder victims. Among them there\u2019s \u2018The Disappeared\u2019, which I\u2019ve seen greatly admired but which seems to me not nearly as good as \u2018Untroubled\u2019, if one reads it in isolation:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There are lost graves on the mountain
\nbut somebody knows where they are:
\nthe man with the cleanest boots in town,
\nthe man with the spotless car.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In isolation, that does pack an immediate, powerful punch. However, once the reader\u2019s taken the point of its single fierce thrust there\u2019s nowhere else within<\/em> the poem for the mind to go. In this way it\u2019s quite unlike \u2018Untroubled\u2019, which keeps the mind in movement around the multiple and contradictory realities it presents. However, if one reads the volume through, there\u2019s an effective shock in suddenly stumbling on \u2018The Disappeared\u2019 after the sweeter and more relaxed ones that come before it. Then, as one reads on, what comes next gets the mind moving again, like a river flowing round a rock it can\u2019t flow through. There\u2019s something of a paradox here. Ormsby has a fine sense of rhythm and form, so there\u2019s pleasure in the shape of each individual poem and of the individual lines within it. Nevertheless, I feel strongly that The Rain Barrel<\/em> is best read as a whole, or a number of poems at a time, because so much of its beauty arises from its constantly shifting angles on recurring topics, so that the poems meet each other in a fluid way, like the shifting surfaces of water on the sea or a wind-blown lake, rather than confronting each other as separate crystals or like sculptures dotted round a lawn. Of course many of them would make a powerful impact on their own, and no doubt have in magazines, but others that might not seem particularly memorable in isolation have loveliness and life as part of this shimmering between poles of celebratory bucolic recall, immediate positive experience and encounters with the wounds of the life. The fourth poem, \u2018Fuchsia\u2019, reflects this receptiveness to change in the way things are seen:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The earrings, the lanterns, the tassels
\nof the fuchsia change before our eyes.
\nNow they are bells, now frozen tears,
\nnow blood-drops from the heart of summer.
\nThe fuchsia hedge is redolent of old battles,
\na peaceful tapestry in the annals of stone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a more extended way, a fine poem called \u2018The Butterfly House\u2019 flicks between pleasure in the voluptuous beauty of the butterflies in a simulated tropical environment and a shiver of repulsion at the thought of a snake in (presumably) another part of the zoo. The butterflies<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 spend their days<\/p>\n

being exquisite in a history without wars. We are able,
\nbriefly, to forget the scaly intent,
\nthe cold-skinned slither a hundred yards away
\nin the tropical ravine. Hold up your arm<\/p>\n

and with luck you will emerge into the garden,
\nbadged and sleeved with butterflies,
\na thousand bright sails opening around you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This poem would certainly be richly resonant and satisfying on its own but it too lives most fully in context. In context, for example, the description of the snake resonates with that of the ex-terrorist in \u2018The Disappeared\u2019, and the way the blessing of beauty makes visitors to the butterfly house \u2018able, \/ briefly, to forget\u2019 horror makes a poignant contrast with the inability of the loved ones of terror victims to forget their loss, in poems like \u2018Today There Has Been Information\u2019, \u2018Winter Landscape with Searchers\u2019, or \u2018No Closure\u2019.<\/p>\n

The garden of \u2018The Butterfly House\u2019 is a kind of secular Eden with snakes in its background. As \u2018with luck<\/em> you will emerge into the garden\u2019 suggests, Ormsby\u2019s keen sensitivity to the world\u2019s richness and beauty is animated by awareness of how precarious our enjoyment of these things is. That obviously relates to the wound of the Troubles.\u00a0 There are poems on the sadness of age, too, and the inevitability of death. I\u2019d particularly like to mention \u2018The Wild Dog Rose\u2019 in this connection. However, Ormsby\u2019s willingness to admit grief and loss doesn\u2019t have a depressing effect on the book as a whole. Its grief is the obverse of its joy, and there\u2019s far more of the joy than the grief. It\u2019s full of lyrical delight in small things, accepting life in its totality and in its constant movement between different kinds of feeling. Radiant lyricism is one expression of its joy. Another is laughter \u2013 sometimes just a smile or chuckle in the corners of the poem, sometimes a full-blown delighting in absurdity. There are a number of serious and quotable poems on the art of poetry \u2013 I particularly like the three graceful haiku elegies for Seamus Heaney \u2013 but I\u2019ll finish my review with the beginnings of two comic ones. Together they illustrate Ormsby\u2019s skill in subtle variations of register, and the way his lyricism is earthed to common sense, common experience and common language even as it moves easily into language of more rarefied kinds. They also, of course, illustrate contrasting attitudes to life and art. No prize for guessing which is closer to Ormsby\u2019s own.<\/p>\n

From \u2018Poem Beginning and Ending with a Drunken Poet\u2019:<\/p>\n

Snowflakes are melting into wine.
\nThe poet, Li Po, drunk as a lord, has dropped his cap
\nin the dust and the way it blows back and forth
\nis the funniest thing he has ever seen.<\/p>\n

And from \u2018The Poets\u2019:<\/p>\n

The Poets are spaced out singly
\naround the park in dark overcoats.
\nEven the women are wearing bowlers.
\nDeaf to the barbarous vowels of the waterfowl
\nthey talk to themselves
\nin an elegant, indecipherable murmur,
\nunnerving the swans.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Rain Barrel<\/em><\/strong> by Frank Ormsby. \u00a312.00. Bloodaxe Books. ISBN 978-1780374925<\/strong><\/p>\n

I would like to thank David Cooke for permission to repost this review, which appears in The High Window<\/a> reviews section.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Untroubled\u2019, the first poem in The Rain Barrel, is a kind of brief resume of the whole volume, and also I think one of its best poems. It stands out both for the speed with which it makes the mind move and for the way that even as it does so it sustains a powerful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-frank-ormsby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291"}],"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=2291"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2295,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291\/revisions\/2295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}