A close reading of M.R. Peacocke's The Path through the Wood

Within the constraints of the format of a blog, it’s difficult to do justice to the complex simplicity of M.R. Peacocke’s poetry. As a consequence, rather than offering up a condensed review of her excellent new collection, The Long Habit of Living (HappenStance Press, 2021), today’s post attempts an in-depth analysis of an individual poem from the book in question. Peacocke’s work very much lends itself to such close attention, rewarding the peeling-off of her delicately applied layers of potential sense.

The poem in question, titled ‘The Path through the Wood’, feels especially significant because it comes to represent something of an Ars Poetica and, by extension, a vision of life itself. The opening lines of ‘The Path through the Wood’ immediately set out the co-existence of opposites. This is achieved via their juxtaposition:

Through the little gate. A breath in, a breath out
measured the interim between is and is not…

‘In’ and ‘out’, ‘is’ and ‘is not’: both these opposites are interconnected by inhabiting the ends of consecutive lines. And then there’s the use of the word interim instead of interval, which might at first glance seem more natural. Peacocke’s choice underlines the provisional rather than the inevitable, the relative rather than the absolute.

As the narrator of the poem progresses through the wood, so conventional vision has to be put to one side:

…One sense became another: sigh of an odour,
taste of the darkness, fragrance of touch. My eyes found rest…

In other words, the absence of sight means that other senses have to work overtime. The consequence is transcendence via unexpected perspectives and sensations. Is the poet referring to a fresh understanding of the world around us or to a creative process whereby experience and anecdote are turned into poetry? Or to both?

The poem’s last stanza, meanwhile, not only draws these strands together but also opens out beyond the poem itself:

…The self that walked through the wood knew more than I,
till all that had led me, left me as I stepped out —
part with relief, part with regret — into fields of stars.

The first line invokes the sense of transcendence that ran through the previous stanza, but Peacocke eschews any Wordsworthian exaltation of the natural world. Instead, she uses the poem’s closing lines to relativise the narrator’s experience: led becomes left, while relief blends with regret.

And then, of course, she plants a deliciously ambiguous final image in our heads. Romantic? Stark? Or both once again? That interpretation can only depend on the beholder and the reader. Clarity riven through with nuance: M.R. Peacocke’s Ars Poetica and outlook on life.

A poem and a review

This is just a quick post to point you in the direction of a couple of pieces I've had published over the past few days. On the one hand, the Poem of the Week at the Mary Evans Picture Library is Home Comforts from The Knives of Villalejo, my first full collection. You can read it here. On the other hand, meanwhile, my OPOI review of Liz Lefroy's new pamphlet, Great Master/small boy (Fair Acre Press, 2021) is up at Sphinx (see here)...

A poem on Ben Banyard's blog...

I'm delighted to report that my poem Scroll Down is up at Ben Banyard's blog as part of his "Finest" series. This poem was first published in Strix, but is now making its online debut.

You can read it via this link. Moreover, while you're there, you can explore an extensive, top-notch back catalogue of his choices...

Water, water everywhere...!

If I were asked to name one signature theme or image for U.K. poetry over the past twenty years, it would be water. British English has so many words for different types of rain and for the movement of liquid, and numerous poets seem to reflect those riches in their work.

Am I right...? If so, why? Is such close attention to water a consequence of the U.K.'s climate? And does climate have a deeper connection not just to our everyday experiences but to our poetic lives...?

Jeremy Wikeley's The Left Margin

It's always a joy to discover high-quality poetry blogs, so I was delighted to find Jeremy Wikeley's The Left Margin last week. Moreover, it might be new to me, but there's an extensive archive of posts, which means prolonged reading pleasure while I catch up. My personal favourites are probably his pieces on Philip Larkin and Louis MacNeice. Why don't you have a look for yourself by following this link...?

Espero, an example of the perils of translation

On many occasions, the whole set of connotations of a word in one language simply cannot be conveyed in another. One such example would be the statement Espero in Spanish. In English, this could be translated in several ways, but the three main options would be as follows:

1) I wait

2) I expect

3) I hope

The translator firstly finds themselves forced to interpret which version the original writer might have intended to communicate, as all three cannot be succinctly retained in English. Secondly, meanwhile, they're consequently obliged to remove any ambiguity that the original might (or might not) have sought to play on among those three potential meanings. And thirdly, the verb esperar is loaded with the same three etymological, social and emotional connotations that cannot be conveyed in English by a single word. 

In other words, for instance, when a Spaniard expects something, they're linguistically aware that they're also hoping and waiting for it. An English speaker is not. No matter how we dress up a translator's syntactic and semantic dance, how can such tensions ever be resolved to any degree of satisfaction, how can the same ambiguities and multiplicities of meaning be preserved? 

The perils of translating poetry

I've long avoided translating poetry from Spanish, despite multiple requests over the years, because I'm convinced there's a tipping point for certain linguists, including myself, after which their growing awareness of the layers and depths of nuance in the original language disarms them as translators. 

What do I mean by this statement? Well, thanks to Carmine Starnino's Facebook feed, I encountered Katia Grubisic's excellent new essay in The Walrus (see here to read it in full) about this very subject, including the following extract that expresses my stance perfectly:

"Literary translation...is a pack of lies. Every word compensates, approximates; every sentence omits far more than it includes. Choice is begrudging; while the chooser wrangles every possible permutation and absence, the reader trots around in the target language, blissfully oblivious to what is missing, what’s been cut, inserted, made up, woven in..."

Of course, you're within your rights to challenge me as to what the alternative might be, because translations, however imperfect, are the only way for us to access any poetry that's been written in a language we can't speak. And my reply would be to recognise that you're right, but also simply to ask for your understanding as to why I can't take on any translations myself.