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such a hoo-hoo-o-o-high
LET ME, LET,
LET, LET ME IN
something or
another slips in
[from
'Suspiria']
I wanted to like this book a lot. It is beautifully produced, on thick paper
with clear graphics and facsimiles. It is long, and I like that confident
imposition on my time. Flicking through, almost every page displays a
different form and several typefaces.
Le Fanu's Ghost comes endorsed by Susan Howe
('information has been arranged to perfection'), and is clearly heavily
influenced by her. The centre is the Irish Gothic writer Sheridan Le Fanu
(1814-1873). His novels, letters and concerns are all drawn in, as are his
family, their writings, his friends and contemporaries, writers the like of
R.B. Sheridan, making a broad study of Dublin at that time. Three years ago
Susan Howe published The Midnight, a similar
mix of prose and poetry (though the majority is in prose, the poems all in
small blocks) ruminating on the Ireland her mother knew, its writers and
literature. Howe seems to have influenced the historical bent of the book,
which includes a long introductory essay on Le Fanu. Selerie lifts the content
of the poems from documents and books - and the result is a kind of history.
Another writer this book wears on its sleeve is Alan Halsey, who composed the
graphics. The sheer variety of form displayed has more in common with Halsey
than Howe, and the difficulties are alike. Halsey wrote in Marginalien that 'I am interested in the perspective: how these creatures
would seem in Browne's time, before the structural distinction between
amphibia and reptiles had been worked out ... [T]here is an openness in Browne
which our more precise distinctions close off.' In his work there is a drive
to break down taxonomies, to blur distinctions, in an attempt (I think) to
get the reader to see the work without preconception, as an object the limits
and use of which are as yet unknown. Selerie's book does likewise; the mix of
poems, prose and documents, and poems that read like prose, documents
versified, etc., keeps the work from being easily identifiable. Poetic
techniques interrupt historical content, forcing the reader into an
uncomfortable position - how to read. If as poetry, then why the insistence
on history, complete with tedious notes on sources? If as history, then why
make it impossible to reconstruct from the fragments? While this may be a
tactic to engage the reader, such instability creates distance.
Direct engagement is further limited by 'questions about authenticity of
perception and occurrence' ('Prologue'), raised by writing about Le Fanu and
re-organising original documents. We come as close to unmediated experience
of the poems as theatre comes to life. Selerie is aware of this; he writes
that Le Fanu's 'fiction abounds in devices that are equivalent to stage
technique' ('Prologue'), and the poems regularly mention theatre, as in
'Smock Alley Secrets':
Richard
Burbage played Hamlet with John Lewin
who conveyed
this and the part of Henry VIII
to William
Davenant ...
Indeed, Selerie seems to want to make drama of his poems. Speaking of the
'hybrid nature' of Le Fanu's novels, he notes that 'greater detail and slower
progress allow other layers to emerge' ('Prologue'). With detail, Selerie
hopes that connections will arise and disperse, and movement be created,
between poems and lines:
A ghost is a
thing repeated, a shade
that reappears
with variations
...
you hear it
as a half-aside on the forestage
[from 'Revisals']
This desire is in turn frustrated. The problem is, if the poems are read as
part of a whole (there are six sections), fragmentation and obscure and
tedious inclusions throw us off. But if we read poems selectively and
individually (they are all individually titled), at intervals, we lose the
drama.
Halsey has said 'I do try to
write around the back of any subject. ... That's what my kind of poetry's meant
to do. That's what it's for.' (I stole that quote
from Ian Seed's review on this site.) This too provides a key. Le Fanu's
Ghost resembles the jumbled index of a history
book in list poems such as 'Catalogue of the Letter M':
The Hon.
Richard Marston
Mr Merton
George Mervyn
General and
Miss Montague
Mr A
Mervyn/Mordaunt
Mrs Marston ...
or footnotes, in the inclusion of correspondence like 'Missing Spring':
Dear Willie
the Railway Wanderer [W. R. Le Fanu],
I want to
know where Brinsley Lefanu is & whether he is still
studying art
as a profession. ...
There is no poetry going on in pages such as these, which hints that
individual parts are units making a whole book of poetry, but which in
themselves are not poems; but we have just noted the problem of reading the
whole.
The subject we have been broaching, with found texts and juxtaposition is
collage. Rather than fitting together into new possibilities, the
juxtapositions are metonymic - they point to a larger structure, one we see
only partly; this is writing 'around the back'. This engages the reader's
imagination as well as keeping poems concentrated without having to resort to
abstraction. A poem that can be compact but never culminate is appealing. An
example is 'Amarantha Takes':
Lace ruffles
spell a story
about the
cuffs and neck
love is
always selfish
you must
capture the 'o' - voilˆ
a carriage
wheel spinning
hoofs in the
night ...
In poems like this, indeterminacy is surprising and exciting - I particularly
like 'about' in the second line, referring to the subject of 'a story' and to
material around a 'neck'.
At other times, Le Fanu's Ghost resembles Kurt
Schwitters' Merz collages; found objects are stuck and layered together;
connections occur, but the pieces are discreet enough to keep from binding.
No picture results. Despite often being too small to be recognizable, the
scraps, finding no home, call to their original contexts. The result is work
that doesn't from a cohesive whole, or enable the viewer to imagine
individual parts in their original states. Selerie's poems inhabit the same
space between worlds: the content points out of the poem, to a complete
history, while form constrains. The final stanza of 'Exquisite Corpse' is a
case in point:
Are we any
wiser as we grow
disburthened of gauze and torches
or is it our
illusions which change
one
single object in steel or taffety
like your
skeleton-key, I see the ceiling
burnished to prove
what no
chemistry can detect
in
four times so many years
tried by a
terrible escape
The result is that the poem becomes a contested site, a register of
juxtaposition. Indeed, the book runs on juxtaposed words:
art act
blend
brand
contend consent
dame
damn
ergot regret ...
[from 'Alphacrux']
phrases:
she in
letters I show
gold inturned from granite
with
octagon lines
bespoke
a mother
lost breathes
still
for
flowers who
climb
not
barred by
musty brocade
[from
Helen's Tower']
and sentences:
Could not be
called a cave. Dark and bright the stones.
United
by labour. A vaulted passage with many stairs.
Reft of
reach. Sunbeams strain through painted glass.
Friend
is the voice carried by holes in the statue. Family
Covers forbidden issue. Echoes with the lightest foot.
[from
'Casement']
as well as poem to poem. In that sense Howe's comment is true. The problem is
that it takes a lot longer to read this book than to look at a collage, and
interest fails. The reader must lift what they can from each poem. There are
arresting moments, especially when sound comes into the equation - take 'Echo
Plate':
Mary Shelley
reads Rousseau,
stares at one
sheet of creeping ice
Byron dreams
of the sun extinguished
and the icy
earth swinging blind
in moonlit
air
The problem is that they exist in contrast to a lot that is not salvageable;
as well as lists, original documents and letters, there are poems - like
'Smock Alley Secrets' - that read as just versified prose. The imposition on
time becomes too much.
I wanted to like this book a lot, but I don't think Selerie wants me to. The
interesting problems Le Fanu's Ghost raises
seem to be the point: but discovering them needn't take 352 pages.
© Thomas
White 2007
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