{"id":2806,"date":"2024-09-20T15:41:01","date_gmt":"2024-09-20T15:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2806"},"modified":"2024-09-20T15:42:37","modified_gmt":"2024-09-20T15:42:37","slug":"opening-sasha-dugdales-the-strongbox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2806","title":{"rendered":"Opening Sasha Dugdale’s The Strongbox"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m going to be reviewing Sasha Dugdale\u2019s The Strongbox<\/em> and a couple of other books for The North. There won\u2019t be space for close reading in the review, so I thought I\u2019d say a few things here.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s such a vividly written book, so alive with shifting images, suggestions and associations, that as I read I keep wanting to pause, to pin down the impressions it sets fizzing in my mind. For now I\u2019ll just make a couple of brief points about how styles, scenes and resonances are interwoven on its first page.<\/p>\n

Morning light, crazed like a delft tile.<\/p>\n

Three blue figures bent over a frame
\ncoffee on the stove
\nand repairing
\n…………………..<\/span>snip
\n<\/em>repairing
\n…………….<\/span>snip<\/em><\/p>\n

Heavy shears clatter on the table.<\/p>\n

Evenings on the sofa
\nthree old women
\nin the shapeshifting beam of the telly
\npoking strands of cloth through a net
\nto make familiar the stone cold hearth,
\nrags made from dresses and towels
\nfrom sheets and aprons
\nrags stripped and ripped
\nfrom shoulders and hips
\nfar too soon<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0electric bars
\n<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0and a relief of heaped plastic coals
\n<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0through which flames rise
\n<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0always in the same measure
\n<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0kindled and consuming
\n<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0then waning
\n<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0so other fires can spring up
\n<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0always in the same measure<\/em><\/p>\n

These three blue figures clearly look towards the three Moirai or goddesses of fate in Greek mythology, though I don\u2019t think you need to know that to make sense of the poem. I don\u2019t know how the lines would sound in Dugdale\u2019s voice, but as they fall on my inner ear they\u2019re given a solemn, foreboding tread by their frequent clustering of heavy stresses: \u2018Morn<\/strong>ing light<\/strong> crazed<\/strong> like<\/strong> a delft<\/strong> tile<\/strong>\u2019, \u2018three blue fig<\/strong>ures\u2019, \u2018Hea<\/strong>vy shears<\/strong> clat<\/strong>ter\u2019 and so on. In a more elusive way, the sheer, hard definiteness of the sounds seems to hold the images at a distance, giving them a kind of numinous weight, a feeling that what\u2019s being evoked isn\u2019t something localized and incidental but something solemnly ordained the enactment of a ritual, as if to represent a fundamental feature of existence. This impression is strengthened by other elements of patterning \u2013 hints of archaic or heightened syntax throughout and the repeated line in the italicised paragraph. However, it\u2019s modified by an opposing pull towards the mundane and temporal. This comes above all, I think, from the words \u2018telly\u2019 and \u2018poking\u2019, the one bringing a touch of slangy familiarity, the other making the women seem clumsy-fingered and short-sighted. One of the fine things about the passage is the way it brings these opposing impressions together, making the fateful and numinous shine through the mundane and transient or be shone through by it, most vividly in the phrase \u2018in the shapeshifting beam of the telly\u2019, where the line\u2019s beginning brings a flood of associations with folktale and myth and its end earths us in the familiar world.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a strong rhythmic coherence to the whole passage. However, separating words and phrases, focusing attention on their individual resonances, cadences and associations, the very slow, emphatic tread that creates this overall rhythmic coherence also emphasises how much rhythmic variety it includes. In fact for me one of the main delights of the passage is simply feeling this variety and how it gives changing body to the changing images, feeling, for example, how after the suspended images, thinner, softer sounds and drifting pauses of<\/p>\n

Three blue figures bent over a frame
\ncoffee on the stove
\nand repairing
\n…………………..<\/span>snip
\n<\/em>repairing
\n…………….<\/span>snip<\/em><\/p>\n

the thudding abruptness of \u2018Heavy shears clatter on the table\u2019 evokes the way my tailor father-in-law\u2019s heavy iron scissors would bang down on a table.<\/p>\n

This kind of immediate physical pleasure forms a solid core around which more elusively shifting suggestions move into and out of focus. Individual words and phrases seem surrounded by space within which reflections and associations unfold. Readers of Greek mythology, for example, making the association between these three blue figures and the Greek goddesses of fate, will hear a suggestion of the finality of death in \u2018heavy shears clatter on the table\u2019: Atropos, \u2018She Who May not Be\u00a0 Turned\u2019, is the fate who cuts the thread of a life to end it. But different readers will find different suggestions and associations coming into play. These are so many and their interplay is so delicate that singling out individual strands may seem crass, but describing my own associations, in a roughly contemporary context the picture of the three old women in the beam of the telly suggested refugees or settlers trying to settle in someone else\u2019s ruined or abandoned home; field hospital nurses improvising wound bandages; and the stripping of the dead. In a more allegorical way, I thought of the three stages of life \u2013 the newborn moving into a world abandoned by previous generations, being clothed in the appurtenances of adult life, then being stripped of it all in death. The net made me think of the net of consequence in which Agamemnon and others are trapped in Aischylos\u2019s play. The flames \u2018kindled and consuming \/ then waning \/ so other fires can spring up\u2019 made me think of the succession of generations, bringing to mind lines in Alice Oswald\u2019s Memorial<\/em>,<\/p>\n

Like leaves who could write a history of leaves
\nThe wind blows their ghosts to the ground
\nAnd the spring breathes new life into the woods
\nThousands of names thousands of leaves<\/p>\n

Even as I type this, though, I feel the living ideas freeze between the cold paws of analysis. A closer approach to sharing responses to such vital poetry would be joint reading and face to face discussion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m going to be reviewing Sasha Dugdale\u2019s The Strongbox and a couple of other books for The North. There won\u2019t be space for close reading in the review, so I thought I\u2019d say a few things here. It\u2019s such a vividly written book, so alive with shifting images, suggestions and associations, that as I read […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-sasha-dugdale"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2806"}],"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=2806"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2810,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2806\/revisions\/2810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}