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.
