An Ocean of Static(Penned in the Margins) by JR Carpenter has already been ably reviewed several times (among others, by Alison Graham, Jade Cuttle, Mary Paterson, Tom Jeffreys, and Steve Spence – links to which reviews, along with some interesting interviews with the poet, can be found on Carpenter’s webpage) so I will try in this post to make some observations and connections about this very good experimental book of poetry that have not yet been made, rather than simply saying again, less well, what the above reviewers have already said.

What occurred to me first was that this is a book not about ocean depths but about ocean surfaces (there is proportionately little that happens in as opposed to on the ocean), and of course by extension it is about those scraps and fragments, partially hidden, random, and drifting, that are visible because they have floated up…

A good poem is a window you need to learn how to look through, and in learning how to look you may begin to discover something new about the world behind it. This is something that occurred to me several times while reading Jericho Brown’s The New Testament (Picador). Race, Nation, Sexuality and Religion are at the very centre of this collection and when writer and reviewer share none of these things it would be remiss to ignore the fact; but we don’t pick up books to have our own experience of life reflected back at us (at least not all of us, not all the time), and it is a mark of the strength of this collection for me (white, heterosexual etc. as I am) that it doesn’t say the things I might have expected it to. What it does say is said in a way that forced me…

I like a good grandiose blog-post title, and this is one I’ve been wanting to use for a while, so I’m pleased the opportunity has arisen. On Monday I went for the first time to the Poetry Society’s regular ‘Poetry Review Discussion’ evening (above the Poetry Café in Betterton Street, Covent Garden), where interested PS members discuss poems from the most recent Poetry Review, exchange ideas, point out literary references, offer alternative perspectives, and generally have an enjoyable poetry chat in a friendly, non-threatening, and non-judgemental atmosphere. It was during, or shortly after, this discussion that I realised I might have found a use for my portentous title. After all, what were we doing if not searching for meaning in each poem, and doesn’t every poem represent such a search on the part of the poet? I think it does.

But first, the Monday evening ‘Poetry Review Discussion’:

There is a short poem towards the middle of Clarissa Aykroyd’s debut pamphlet Island of Towers which is called ‘Lighthouse’ and in which an island and its lighthouse are metaphors for a person sighing and sobbing in their sleep. In three brief couplets (the third separated from the first two by a couplet-sized blank space, perhaps indicating the eclipse between flashes from the lighthouse) we get a powerful impression that the sleeper is lost in their own darkness, one more profound than the dark of night or sleep. “Morning hasn’t come” we are told, as though it should be here by now but has failed to arrive. Whatever this sleeper’s darkness is, it remains despite the fact that “the lighthouse lifts so high, (and) the island / streams with light”.
This image of an island with a tower sending its searching light out into the unknown is not only towards…

In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova (Fitzcarraldo Editions)

When Maria Stepanova was fifteen, her mother showed her a small lace purse which had belonged to her grandmotherLyolya and which contained an old, small piece of paper “beginning to tear at the folds”; on the paper was written a single name: Victor Pavlovish Nelidov. The name was a mystery to her mother, and it remained one to Maria despite her searching; and a mystery it remains – as far as the reader ofIn Memory of Memoryknows – to this day. The purse, the folded piece of paper, and the ‘invisible Nelidov’ are a potent symbol of the hopeless yet meaning-rich search which has clearly obsessed Stepanova for years and to which this book is an outstanding testament.

I have had no success, only the feeling of walking into yet another empty green field and realizing once…

Listen to heart-songs–
the breath of eternity,
as ocean-kissed air dances
with brilliant sparkle-light,
and white-cat clouds pounce
with joy
at the blue-blanketed sky, wondering

~if~

ghosts hide in the shadows,
perhaps they linger to tell their secrets–
imprisoned between before and after,
they wind-whisper
in the fever-blush of morning sky,
and silent-laugh in the night—
at your smile from the window.

A late message from the Oracle today. We’ve had blue sky and sparkling water the last couple of days. As I was getting ready to post this, I looked up and saw this painting of my mom’s. It doesn’t have a title or date that I know of, but it seemed to fit.