|
|
At first glance these two
collections from Rupert Loydell couldn't be more different. On the one hand
we have A Fire in the House of Ice, a
photocopied, though surprisingly sturdy, booklet of poems inspired by and
exploring the igloo sculptures of Mario Merz. On the other is Ex Catalogue, a nicely presented book divided into two parts: the
first is a series of prose poems, and the second half a sequence of
three-line syllabic poems. Certainly 2006 has been a productive year, but has
it paid off?
The Title A Fire in the House of Ice
seems to me to highlight a striking contrast in the poems between the
restrained, precise tone used and the passion undeniably present. Just as
Merz created igloos from wood, steel, neon tubes and umbrellas, so Loydell
uses the igloo in a wide variety of ways to examine life, particularly the
inner life, whose insular world is has a parallel in the still air inside an
igloo.
This poem is
a new commission that explore
movement and
stillness in nature. The igloo
lets
stillness in, which is sometimes the difference
between life
and death. The igloo is a great death.
It works
along similar principles to photomontage,
creating a
new image out of whatever is put in.
This prevents
snow from blowing into the igloo,
foregrounds
previously hidden detail in the picture.'
(from 'Child's Play')
These lines demonstrate the incredibly self-conscious nature of these poems,
the object of the poem mirroring both its content and the act of its
creation. I was particularly struck by the first of these stanzas, whose form
reflects so well the focus on 'movement and stillness in nature'; the use of
a line break after 'explores' creates a sense of opening up that 'The Igloo'
on the next line fills, the enjambment working differently to produce stasis
and impact. This impact is such that the 'It' opening the second stanzas is
both 'this poem' and 'the igloo', and by extension the poet's eye view,
'creating a new image out of whatever is put in'. This self-aware approach to
artistic creation is augmented by the comparison between use of the image and
the 'principles of photomontage'; Loydell's poems are always shifting their
perspective on 'the igloo', attending to 'previously hidden detail'. Here,
Merz becomes a more obviously relevant artist to these poems. Just as his
igloos were made from all the varied materials of 20th Century western
culture, Loydell uses the ingredients of modern discourse, using them to make
different structures that explore the potential of 'the igloo' as an artistic
device.
Occasionally, the slant of these poems seems to become too self-consciously
postmodern, with certain lines losing impact through their rather academic
resonance.
Words always
lead to others,
notes refer
to other books:
endless
signposts pointing
everywhere
and nowhere,
open maps for
the intrigued.'
(from 'Lines on the Point of Disappearing')
The first of these lines reminds me just a bit too much of undergraduate
lectures on intertextuality: self-consciously literary and surprisingly close
to clichˇ. With such lectures being fairly recent memories perhaps this
reasonable interest is still tainted for me slightly, but when compared to
his usually subtle craft it comes across a touch too ponderous. That 'notes
refer to other books' becomes obvious looking at the notes for this book
itself, which refer not only to Merz, but name articles, books, even emails
and letters as sources. This is not simple allusion though, a la The
Wasteland; Loydell's use of Merz's
sculptures as a framing device and the different slants of each of the poems
hint at the unique worlds of words and ideas that each of us live in, and it
becomes clear he is going much deeper than references to critical theory. The
development of these lines captures a true sense of excitement when it comes to
language, his exploration of it sending him 'everywhere and nowhere', a
situation echoed by the later reference to 'movement and stillness in
nature'. The title reflects this in the well-judged ambiguity between 'the
point' as being either a moment, a 'turning point', or a purpose; the
disappearance might be meaningless or transcendent. His search seems
simultaneously almost futile but invigorating, and he doesn't push the reader
into placing ultimate significance on either; it simply seems unavoidable for
him to continue the search.
It would be unfair to give the impression, however, that the passion of this
collection is a solely intellectual one. The igloo, as a shelter, is a place
for living, for protecting what is precious, and also hints at a wider community,
such as in the closing lines of the poem:
Now in our
village with the falling light,
neatly carved
blocks of ice surround us
where we have
built our igloo homes.
Here the igloo is a comfort, a place to retreat from 'the falling light',
just as 'everywhere and nowhere' implies not only discovery but also
escapism, which might perhaps be 'the Point of Disappearing'. This retreat is
a very human one however, and despite being separate in their individual
pockets of stillness, just as our thoughts keep us unique, there is
solidarity in the final line 'where we have built our igloo homes'. In this
context 'neatly carved blocks of ice' connotes not just a sense of
'precision', but 'care'; there is a gentle humanity in this poetry. My final
example from this collection best illustrates this, two beautiful stanzas
from 'Igloo: im Robert Lax'.
It is dark
outside now Robert
is no longer
here. Words splinter
until we
learn to read them,
islands of
shadow on a page.
No escaping
from or shelter in
the cold
igloo we call death:
corridors of
glass and snow,
stone
memories pegged in place.
This seems to me to bring together so many strands of thought from the
collection, the linguistic element showing its emotional content in the
'islands of shadow on a page'. An excellent line break indeed shows how
'words splinter', producing the plaintive line 'It is dark outside now
Robert' that lends such feeling to the completion 'is no longer here'.
|
|
|
So on to slickly presented Ex
Catalogue. Loydell has again found
inspiration from a visual artist, taking the titles from the catalogue Jonathan
Lasker. Gemalde | Paintings 1977-1997. I
must confess to having little knowledge of painting, and a quick search on
the net turned up some attractive works, but also fairly baffling reviews, so
I must turn straight to the poems, and entrust the task of comparing the two
to someone better qualified! The prose poems making up the first half, the
part that is actually 'Ex Catalogue' and not the later 'Small Paintings', are
a dozen or so lines at most, and are interspersed with 'found prose poems';
Loydell's love of giving sources for his work seems exemplified in this
collection. Many of the same concerns are evident here, but with a wider
scope, and more diverse imagery. There is still a propensity towards images
of structure, whether grids, nests or patterns of light, but the sense of
being somewhat lost, 'everywhere and nowhere', is more pervasive:
Our thoughts
make us feel separate from everyone and everything,
can sometimes
move the world. Our thoughts come from experience,
observation,
feedback and research, create our reality. In our thoughts
we are free;
they throng our consciousness, out of control and without
focus. You
are in our thoughts today.'
(from
'Popular Psyche')
As in much of A Fire in the House of Ice, Loydell moves from the analytical to the excitable, to a final
touching line, but the fast pace of these poems helps to merge these
elements; the analytical side becomes personal quickly enough to avoid the
occasionally academic tone of the former collection. Indeed the intellectual
excitement and wonder has a more direct connection to the gentle emotions on
display, 'out of control and out of focus' being much more visceral than the
'endless signposts pointing / everywhere and nowhere'. This excerpt also
develops the title as not simply signifying a structural method or artistic
allusions, but a more personal sense that these works are plucked from a
catalogue of thoughts and created realities, samples from the interior world
created by 'experience, observation, feedback and research'. Loydell's
referencing is not dry and intellectual, but another way of exploring how all
that we experience plays its part in our attempts to 'create our reality',
and in this he discovers a sense of both freedom and shared humanity. The
'found prose poem' that follows is an apposite extract from a collection of
essays by Alberto Manguel that offers an expansive list of the raw materials
for these constellations of ideas, and their existence 'somewhere defined in
this world of ours by volumes of history and atlases of geography'.
Loydell seems to be looking for a better place to put these experiences, and
this search becomes an essential component of the collection's intimate tone,
as in this extract from 'Born Yesterday':
However much
you gather and assemble you are still well and truly
lost. The
story with no ending starts to resemble a city you once
visited where
the cold and snow made mapping bright and believable.
Today this
alley is dark and you are a passer-by in someone else's
dream...
This explores a sense of vulnerability not so overtly present in A Fire in
the House of Ice, and in addressing it
to 'you' there is a sense of collective struggle, the human desire to create
order from each individual's chaotic store of experiences. The title
emphasises the novelty of experience, not as remembered but as felt; 'the
story with no ending' suggests the revisions of memory, the chance of some
kind of narrative, but retaining the knowledge that in real life we must
still wake up 'well and truly lost'. There is a sense of melancholy in these
lines, 'where the cold and snow made mapping bright and believable' retaining
the balance between impressions of futility and wonder, that it has only been
'believable' some of the time, but that these moments are held close to the
heart when darkness returns.
There is a sense of revision in the final short poems that close this
collection, 'Small Paintings', as if they might be attempts at discovering
what has been found. As any reader would expect by this point, however, the
conclusions are equivocal and uncertain, and these two final examples
illustrate the dilemma that runs through both these collections.
Corridors
connecting
one thing
with another
Full
knowledge of himself
('God-Haunted')
How
interesting and fruitful
to shape all
your anxieties
into these
pure crystals of form
('Rationale')
The capitalisation of 'Full' rather than 'himself' gives much greater depth
to the title 'God-haunted', imbuing the speaker's self-examination with a
religious significance; God here is 'Full knowledge of himself', a coherent
order found through self-discovery. The image used is reminiscent of much of A
Fire in the House of Ice particularly,
with its emphasis on structure and interconnectedness, and seems to
encapsulate the impetus behind the precise, analytical side of Loydell's
tone. In contrast, 'Rationale' contains the ambiguities that allow for the
vulnerable, intimate voices in these poems, the poem that the title refers to
being a most uncertain 'rationale'. The first line is a good example of
Loydell's often wry self-awareness, and initially seems barbed, but the last
line, although still ambiguous, hints at the resilience that prevents this
poem being self-defeating; while 'pure crystals of form' seems emotionally
neutral when compared to the implied desire to be 'fruitful', there is a love
for their intricacy that echoes the imagery of corridors in 'God-haunted'.
The interplay in this poem itself and between other poems is exactly what
prevents these collections being merely 'pure crystals of form'; they are
indeed precise and well crafted, but the fire and humanity in these poems is
by no means lessened by the frequently reserved tone. Loydell has created a
vocabulary for some of the mind's most intangible movements, and in doing so is
approaching material directly connected to the creation of poetry itself. Ex
Catalogue has, in the main, a more
intimate and less academic tone than A Fire in the House of Ice, but both these works contain a great deal of
interesting thoughts and strong, well articulated feeling. Ex Catalogue, for me, was the one I felt a more immediate connection
too, but each time I have revisited A Fire in the House of Ice the differences seem less pronounced, and there is
certainly a great deal of thought provoking and well realised poetry to
explore in both collections.
©
Nicholas Hunt 2006
|