| “‘I have made a heap of all that I could find.’ So wrote Nennius.” So wrote David Jones in his preface to the Anathemata. So wrote I. This book plays throughout with echoes and debts—to Sir Philip Sidney, to Ben Jonson, to Shelley, to Denton Welch, to many. The poet has gleaned from the common, collected that which caught his eye, or his ear. Recorded something close to it. Here, meaning accrues as he feels his life accrues—not simply through one clear design, but through a number of moments linked—lines repeat, are found new in new contexts, are changed, misremembered—dismembered.; The first piece is a mass, a heap, but also an attempt at a written spiritual address. Following is a selection of quatrains, then a group of histories—and finally a long masque, curious about self and nostalgia, about origins and originality. The unifying principle, if it can be thus called, is music—the drive of words—the rhythms, which were overheard from earlier poetries—as all we have and all we are moves on from what was written before. |
