This posthumous collection is a work of impressive artistry and depth.<\/p>\n
It was written under the shadow of a terminal diagnosis of laryngeal cancer and after the removal of Satyamurti\u2019s voice box and part of her tongue. Some poems refer to these things. The way in which they do so reflects one of the qualities that make Satyamurti\u2019s writing so attractive. Whatever may have been the case for her as a person, as poet she approaches her situation in a way virtually purged of ego.<\/p>\n
We see this in \u2018Small Change\u2019. It opens:<\/p>\n
This must be the room of last resort,
\nthis half-lit passage under the dripping bridge
\nwhere, on the only route to the Underground,
\nyou pass four, sometimes more, rough sleepers
\nstrung out at intervals against the wall,<\/p>\n
the same, day after day, week after week.<\/p>\n
The tone is masterly. The language is unemotive, almost prosaically plain, suggesting a pedantic concern for factual accuracy by the pausing over \u2018four, sometimes more\u2019. And yet from the first line the scene has the compelling resonance of symbolism and myth. And line 6 seems to ache with empathy, not through emotive language but because the effect of its repetitions is heightened by the stanza break. What\u2019s involved is a very skilful use of poetic technique to make facts seem to speak for themselves. They\u2019re made to feel immediately present (\u2018This<\/em> must be\u2019) and the reader is drawn into a direct confrontation with the sleepers (\u2018you<\/em> pass\u2019). Keeping herself out of the picture, the poet makes us face the horror without distraction. And what we see is how for these rough sleepers the real has taken on the extremity of myth.<\/p>\n The poetic \u2018I\u2019 appears later in the poem. Again, though, she does it in a very objective way, not making the poem about<\/em> herself but putting her life into its presentation of other things. She becomes an Everywoman, wanting to do something, seeing that doing anything meaningful would demand more than she\u2019s prepared to give, and guiltily aware of her own selfishness:<\/p>\n I want them gone. I want to be absolved. If it were only one… Or just one day…<\/p>\n If she started moralising or breast-beating at this point the poem would be corrupted by egotistical self-regard. The purity and truth of its dramatisation of a common experience would be lost.<\/p>\n A good poem keeps moving us to new places intellectually and imaginatively and this certainly does that. In the last line there\u2019s a total surprise:<\/p>\n What has a poem got to do with this?<\/p>\n Sheer unexpectedness would be enough to make that conclusion send out shockwaves and ripples of reflection. It\u2019s also deeply ambiguous. Read one way, it suggests that poetry is irrelevant to the problem of homelessness. Read another, it suggests that poetry is morally compelled to do something with it \u2013 that poetry becomes<\/em> irrelevant or shirks its responsibility if it doesn\u2019t take this kind of reality on board. The ambiguity of \u2018got to do (with)\u2019 forces a confrontation between the two ideas.<\/p>\n The first stanza of \u2018Small Change\u2019 shows how much can be done by sparing use of figurative language. Satyamurti\u2019s natural gift for metaphor is abundantly illustrated in contexts where a focus on metaphors themselves is appropriate, as in the second stanza of \u2018Solitude\u2019:<\/p>\n To be alone Interestingly, the poem\u2019s weight is felt more through the colourless metaphor of tasting existence than the more arresting one of the moths, and comes not from the metaphor itself but from our knowledge that the speaker\u2019s time for tasting existence is running out. The fact that this isn\u2019t stated in the poem itself allows the poem to speak equally to and for people whose tasting of existence has less urgency.<\/p>\n I said some poems do confront the poet\u2019s situation directly. Some of these ponder the value and point of poetry. Others focus on mortality, or what our knowledge of it means for our sense of the value of life.<\/p>\n Again, what I find impressive isn\u2019t just the precision and economy with which these poems are written but the stance they take, the direction of their vision. Instead of asking us to look at<\/em> her own situation, Satyamurti looks through<\/em> it at other people\u2019s experiences and broader human meanings. The second half of \u2018Glossal\u2019 goes:<\/p>\n What prudent torture it was, of this most potent sixty grams of flesh \u2013 Such breadth of perspective is continually present. The last poem \u2013 \u2018Solid\u2019 \u2013 ends on a note that brings together the cosmic and the personal:<\/p>\n For nothing goes to waste But there\u2019s no denying Here, the brevity of the lines and the hint of interrupted song in their rhythm create a tone of musing inwardness. Their spare style allows subtle shifts of tone, register and mental focus to make themselves felt both quietly and deeply.<\/p>\n The poems I\u2019ve quoted use similar styles of reflective speech. I should mention some in different modes. \u2018All that is Solid Melts into Air\u2019 (the title a quotation from Marx\u2019s Communist Manifesto) brilliantly parodies the speech of hotshot City slickers, gaining depth both from the way the title invokes mortality and from the shift to a more rueful tone at the end. \u2018Requiem for a Death Foretold\u2019 and \u2018The Climate Game\u2019 both supplement Satyamurti\u2019s skill in creating a speaking voice with typographic devices of an \u2018experimentalist\u2019 nature.<\/p>\n Altogether, this is a book I\u2019d warmly recommend and expect to enjoy over many years.<\/p>\n
\nShall I give some coins to each of them?<\/p>\n
\nis to taste existence,
\nits small choices
\nbrushing me like moths.<\/p>\n
\nto cut out dissident tongues,
\nknowing that the subtlest manoeuvres<\/p>\n
\nthis truth-teller, this incendiary organ,
\nthis evolutionary achievement
\nas vital to the human core of us
\nas the heart is \u2013 can shift the world.<\/p>\n
\nno atom is destroyed
\njust redeployed.
\nAnd the molecules here now
\nwere here when time began \u2013
\nno animals, no man \u2013
\nand Earth was wilderness.<\/p>\n
\none day you will be dead
\nand where do the colours go
\nwhen the carpet fades?<\/p>\n