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This is Jennie
Feldman's first collection and it shows her to be a complex, subtle poet.
Hers is a poetry that doesn't suffer fools gladly so one would be wise to
have a dictionary to hand for some of the more specialised vocabulary, and to
brush up on your Greek mythology. There is no irony intended here for Feldman
treats the writing of poetry with respect, producing skilfully crafted poems
where every word is chosen with care, and there is nothing superfluous.
If the ocean's imponderability has ever made you think: I really must write
about this - but you never have, then Jennie Feldman may be the poet for you,
for the sea dominates this collection. Moving across landscapes as diverse as
Scotland and Israel she writes about its every nuance, using precise
observation and drawing on its manifold associations. By the time she has
finished, there seems little left to be said. The multi-layered quality of
these poems is enhanced further by a musical motif that runs through many of
the poems along with references to language - verb tenses in particular - all
building up to a kind of Platonic 'listening to the spheres'. Take the
'living in the moment' experience in 'Sea Daffodils', where she speaks
directly to the plant:
Because the
book that has your photo
says you'll
die tomorrow, here I am
hooked on
your single day's extravagance.
For this is
the way we ride the dune,
bareback with
tilted trumpets, lost for music
and knowing
we'll never hear it again
that pale
arpeggio of geese pulling south
to one long
note diminuendo.
What is particularly clever is the way she draws on imagery that is exact and
rich in concrete detail at the same time as she manages a more abstract
meditation. Take 'A Fifth String':
And I wish
the sea had kept to itself
the evening
catch hauled up through livid silk.
All those
sardine eyes seeing everything and
nothing for
the first time.
Indeed much of her poetry works by making associative leaps triggered by what
she sees immediately before her, but in a way that comes across as highly
controlled rather than a loose stream of consciousness. Music is frequently
at the centre of this. We see it in the titles: 'Chromatic', 'A Fifth
String', 'Harmonic',
'Diapason'(as we all know - the foundation stops of an organ), 'Tango' and
'Night Song' as well as the
musical references dotted throughout the poems.
As she begins to draw on Greek mythology we first of all see the
juxtaposition of present and past as she places real and mythical figures
side by side. Then in the marvellous two poem sequence 'Ogygia' (the island
where Calypso imprisoned Odysseus for seven years - you knew that didn't
you?) there is clever manipulation of the sea's literal and metaphorical
associations. Consider first of all 'Calypso' where we see Feldman milking
the sea imagery for all its worth. She opens with the line, 'Not so much love
as the careless act/of shipwreck' and then continues, with some clever
wordplay thrown in for good measure:
O singular man, this distance
of yours. The
sea's vast habit singing
in your
blood, so that even asleep
when your
limbs' encircling longitude, latitude
pin me down,
I'm not the point.
The poem then concludes with a cracking last line, (referring to The
Odyssey) 'As if I dared to hope
the poem ends here'. The second poem 'Odysseus' goes on to provide a moving
description of Odysseus's state of limbo:
But I'm dying
of this
protracted present tense, the sea's
unbearable
sameness without me.
These nights
that hang an anchor-stone
smooth around
my neckÑ
Though Feldman generally keeps the reader on their toes as she shifts back
and forth between the concrete and the abstract, she can also write wonderful
stuff that is solidly down to earth. Note, in 'Flying Fish' the precise
description of a local fisherman along with the marvellous eulogy of the last
four lines - with the transcendental reflected in the earthly:
Yoannis squints
against the
sea glare. Talks to himself,
the words
mysterious and only their rhythms
visible in
the cigarette that jives
against his
beard. But that hardly explains
why he leapt
to mind one morning
when streaks
of silver suddenly arched
right out of
the water, converting everything.
But it is the poem 'Blue' which conveys the all-consuming impact the sea has
on the poet - a place where the whole history of it sensations are relived
each time, with vibrant colour that is almost overpowering:
And the battered pair of boots
that got here
first, sand in the creases
resumes a
gentle soliloquy,
paces out the
Tristia in rhythms
of cerulean
blue. It comes to this,
listening for
sounds that exile makes
- beyond the
surf's drumrolled punchline -
the perfect
pitch of something
loved and
lost. Which is why we're
back for the
umpteenth time. Primed
for
ultramarine, blazoned with it
when we
leave, as kingfishers keep
the wingflash
even in dry savannas
swooping for
mites, and only a cobalt streak
to recall the
deeper plunge.
The collection is not of course restricted to writing about the sea, for
travel is central to much of the poetry as we see her ranging between
Scotland, Paris, the Mediterranean and Israel (where she now lives). This
said there is a consistency of outlook, as the blurb on the back puts it,
citing from her poem 'Moth': 'the poems are on the wing "sourcing the
radiance" of things' in response to the dark'.
Finally, along with the intelligence and subtlety of these poems, there is
the craft. This is seen in various ways: the organisation of her metaphors;
her careful diction; the varied structures with their healthy mix of
enjambment and end-stopped lines. Also, although most of the poems are
unrhymed she sometimes mixes in half rhymes here and there to give the poems
cohesion. By way of conclusion here is the poem 'Arabia Oxeye' which shows
particularly skilled use of half-rhymes - here used more overtly than
anywhere else in the collection:
April says it
with yellow flowers.
Not just the
niceties of milk-vetch,
mustard,
love-in-a-mist, scabious.
I mean the
quilled, laconic speech
of broom, how
it utters each bloom
perfectly,
pointedly, fragrance
exhaling the
thought of it, like rhyme
adding a
further peculiar sense.
I mean the
way the desert springs surprise:
gold hawkbit,
fleabane, vipergrass;
and this
Arabia oxeye
I offer you -
knocked sideways
by your
latest from the wilderness
tinctures
pressed from words to voice of eye.
Anvil Press have published Jennie Feldman's The Lost Notebook to coincide with her translations of the French
poet Jacques Reda, Treading Lightly: Seected Poems 1961-1975. Takes this two books together and you have clear
evidence of a premier league poet and translator.
© Belinda
Cooke 2006
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