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I've come to really like Peter Hughes' poetry during the
past few years and this new collection, previously released in sections, I
believe, may well prove to be his masterpiece, if we can still talk about
such things. I'm sure that if you're seriously au fait with Petrarch's
sonnets you'll find additional pleasure in reading these modern versions -
all 317 of them -interpretations rather than translations, I feel, which take
the basic premise of a muse, of unrequited love and the notion of forbidden
love (due to a class divide) and give it a contemporary blast. Though you get
the feel of one 'renaissance man' speaking to or through another here, make no
mistake, this is modern poetry with a capital M and it's wonderful stuff. The
poems are split into sections, numbered with each given an original title in
Italian. Each poem is split into two quatrains and two tercets, they don't
rhyme, except very occasionally and most of the rhyme when it comes is
internal. That's all you need to know about the 'technical details'.
I love the way that Hughes manages to combine snatches of song lyric or
titles with a snippet of political commentary and a host of other information,
which feeds into the poem to produce an ongoing sense of immediacy fuelled by
memory, both collective and individual. These poems speak to us both as
recollections and sensations of a protagonist who is struggling with 'the
pangs of love' and with the difficulties of keeping afloat in a political and
social environment which is not entirely friendly, yet the individual
experience meshes with a wider concern which combines critique with
celebration:
15 / 195
I'm mi vivea
di mia sorte contente
yesterday all
my troubles seemed so far
so good but
now I'm wringing my iambs
& pacing
every stanza anxiously
as I await
more bad news from the muse
they say she
hasn't come down from her room
& the
postman swears her curtains are closed
the family
have sent out for assistance
an expert is
on the way to see her
a half-empty
book left out in the rain
the kindle
fades & goes under the wheel
I write and
am written & write again
to be almost
unwritten by the page
its vacancy
wrinkled by damp night air
dropped in
the dust by the side of the road
(from second
homes from earwigs)
References to contemporary poets abound - Tom Raworth, for example - both as
suggestions of style and influence and in terms of snippeted quotings: I'm
pretty sure for example that 'the heart's uneasy engine still bangs on', from
'Snowclone Detritus' is pure John James though whether this is quoted
deliberately or by 'memory slip' I'm not entirely sure. These texts appear to
be made from a multitude of borrowings and imaginings - they are as
colloquial and vernacular as they are erudite and scholarly, yet so, so easy
and pleasurable to read. If you get stuck or don't pick up on a reference -
inevitable, I'd say, unless, like John Milton you set out to read everything
that's ever been written, which was crazy even in his day! - just carry on
and go back later and google if you feel so inclined. There is both depth and
surface in this writing, which is one way in which the smart contemporary
poet deals with the ever-present problem of information overload:
Hughes' compositional process seems to combine the considered with the
aleatory, both in terms, I suspect, of a deliberate 'veering off the subject'
with a more 'subconscious' word or theme association which at times becomes
manically hilarious:
23 / 203
L'alto
signor, dinanzi a cui non vale
you can't
hurry harry or hairy love
as it makes
no sense & all your feelings
morris dance
in banks & do musicals
about alps
& improbable heirlooms
the manic
aches & joy of love are joined
by pangs of
anxiety regarding
the health of
her kittens & sinuses
or any other
parts of her that twitch
thus when
genuine illness sidles in
there's
insufficient vocabulary
remaining to
express sincere concern
hence the
rise to fame of the saxophone
especially
with scurrying percussion
feeding off
an unpredictable bass
(from second
homes for earwigs)
On re-reading you start to pick up references which resonate throughout, from
melancholy song lyric, as in She Walked Through the Fair, to film and musical topics, as in the phrase in
stanza one above which hints at The Sound of Music, for example. This is the sort of poetry
collection which can be dipped into at random for you are sure to come across
some treasure on every page, yet it's also a book which you will want to read
again, both to experience a fresh pleasure rush as you pick up on some
previously unrecognised pointer or are simply bowled over by the mix of lyric
intensity and 'throwaway' abandon of its (sometime) aleatory composition. I
could say a lot more about this terrific book - I keep being reminded of Ed
Dorn's epic Gunslinger, though
this may be partly because I've been reading the two in tandem - but I know
that it's one I'm going to go back to and it's also the most stimulating and
invigorating collection I've come across for quite some time. Wonderful
stuff.
© Steve Spence 2015
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