{"id":2364,"date":"2020-09-24T10:44:23","date_gmt":"2020-09-24T10:44:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2364"},"modified":"2020-09-24T10:44:23","modified_gmt":"2020-09-24T10:44:23","slug":"matthew-francis-wing-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2364","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Francis, Wing – review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two loves dominate Matthew Francis\u2019s Wing<\/em>: nature, and the English language. There\u2019s very little self-reference: when Francis writes in the first person it tends to be in terms of \u2018we\u2019 rather than \u2018I\u2019 except in the second section, where the speaker is the seventeenth century natural philosopher Robert Hooke, author of Micrographia: or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In earlier books Francis has recreated lives in or journeys to places that can be purely fantastical or are so exotic as to seem fantastical to a traveller visiting them. The \u2018Micrographia\u2019 section brings strangeness home with the revelations of Hooke\u2019s microscope. Tiny beings are vividly and precisely described. Mostly short, frequently enjambed lines give the verse a momentum that brings creatures to life, creating suspense and surprise as we follow Hooke\u2019s investigations. Sometimes we just see the beings themselves. Sometimes, in a flash, we see the world from their point of view. In \u2018Ant\u2019, Hooke\u2019s eye is caught by \u2018a sort of rust that shines and dances\u2019 under a tree. It\u2019s a stream of ants:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A finger felled in their path rocks them
\n……..<\/span>amazed, back on their haunches.
\n…………….<\/span>I see them tasting
\nthe air for subtle intelligence,
\n……..<\/span>till one ventures to scale it<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a further shift in perspective to do with time. Francis deftly evokes Hooke\u2019s seventeenth century world and gives a subtly archaic flavour to his phrasing, so we feel the power Hooke\u2019s discoveries had for a man of his time. In the first lines of \u2018Silverfish, Moth\u2019, a shelf of leather-bound books becomes the unlighted, narrow alleys of a seventeenth century city as Hooke catches sight of a bookworm:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One swish of itself and it vanished
\ninto the alley between two books.
\nThere was a twilight city in there,
\n……..<\/span>leather and paper and dust,
\nwhere it had eaten itself a home.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I almost felt I knew Hooke as a man through his scientist\u2019s commitment to precise observation and communication, the life implied by the analogies that occur to him, and the way his passionate curiosity and wonder breathe through the stately factualism of his style.<\/p>\n

The sections preceding and following \u2018Micrographia\u2019 are written in a quite different, lyrically expressive, often rapturous manner, especially the \u2018Canticles\u2019 one, which closes the book on a note of rapturous but not unqualified celebration. Sometimes to my taste the richness becomes excessive, the accumulation of beautifully jewelled details clogging the overall movement. In the right mood, though, the voluptuous caressing of apples and apple names in \u2018Pomona\u2019\u00a0 or of festive drinks in \u2018Wassail\u2019 is an almost physical pleasure. Descriptions of mushroom hunting in \u2018Liberty Caps\u2019 create an extraordinary brew of sensations, plunging us into the wet earthiness of woods and fields, drawing us with dreamlike intensity into gothic fantasies, suddenly releasing us with stabs of wit. Francis\u2019s gift for metaphor is closely related to the sensuous evocativeness of his writing. It\u2019s a particular pleasure when metaphor opens vistas of wider reflection, as in the wonderful last line of \u2018Waterbear\u2019, where affectionate description of the tardigrade and its power to survive the most extreme conditions ends by saying how one wholly dried up for a decade<\/em> can be revived:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

a drop of water and it pulses,<\/p>\n

as if that was all there was to it,
\nback in the swim, setting off somewhere
\nin the lifeboat of its own body.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Wing<\/em> by Matthew Francis. Faber & Faber. 80pp.; \u00a314.99 (hardback)<\/p>\n

I would like to thank Patricia Oxley for permission to post this review, which appeared in Acumen 97.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two loves dominate Matthew Francis\u2019s Wing: nature, and the English language. There\u2019s very little self-reference: when Francis writes in the first person it tends to be in terms of \u2018we\u2019 rather than \u2018I\u2019 except in the second section, where the speaker is the seventeenth century natural philosopher Robert Hooke, author of Micrographia: or Some Physiological […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-matthew-francis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364"}],"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=2364"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2368,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364\/revisions\/2368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}