London Grip Poetry Review – Cook
Peter Ualrig Kennedy appreciates the warmth and variety in Rose Cookâs recent collection.
Hearth Rose Cook Cultured Llama ISBN 978-0-9957381-4-0 120pp ÂŁ10.00
Hearth is a welcoming and cleverly chosen title. Closely aligned with âheartâ, a hearth provides warmth and light. The hearth is a symbol of love and of life. And indeed Rose Cookâs collection of life-affirming poems lives up to this symbolism. At the outset, in the first section, headed âAfter the Fallâ, her poems are heavy with sadness. There is injury:
He was alone and it was dark when he fell pitched down to stone steps, unnoticed.
And, happily, there is recovery, in âNotes to Icarusâ:
Are you glad to be alive these soft summer days, a year on from your fall? Glad. This is what lucky looks like.
Thereâs also recovery from cancer and chemotherapy, in âSuch Graceâ:
They wouldnât wish it on anyone, yet having survived, they are enlivened, grateful. It shines in their eyes. How brightened are those, who almost died.
I suspect that many of us can relate to that. And I like the way she writes â directly and with a straightforward emotion. In subsequent poems death and grief have their sway. We are being conducted through a labyrinth of beginnings and endings â we may take our cue from the cover image, a photograph credited to the author, showing a tondo labyrinth carved on a tombstone, an image of lifeâs complex journey.
The collection is presented in five sections. In the second, the eponymous âHearthâ, there is gladness and warmth â in âDaughterâ,
When I was allowed home, she brought white hydrangeas to the hearth,
and in âPoem for Brigidâ,
She brings green shoots, the promise of fresh sillion in the fields. We still hear winterâs song, but draw close to the fire with a smile.
But there is also fear, as in âDemeter, Dark Motherâ. Where are we to turn? âThe Motherâs Giftâ brings solace (with an intriguing reference to Vasalisaâs doll, from the old Russian fairy tale), and is followed by âenfoldâ and âWash Dayâ both of which invigorate like the cleanest of linen. In âHouseâ the poet evinces a marked sense of place:
⌠we walk down streets of houses with lighted windows. small theatres, an occasional glimpse of other lives lit like a Greg Crewdson photograph
â an apt simile, channeling those strangely lit American portraits of isolation and desolation. Then the scene switches from domestic mysteries to the animal imagery of the section titled âHareâ, and in particular to an identification with nature in âHare Speaksâ:
If you have sat under stars, have known the depths of breath, then you know me. I am Hare.
Hare is mystery, Hare is magical, âDawn Hareâ is the âsacred hare that sits with Eostre, bringing ancient healingâ. I am re-minded (inevitably) of Ted Hughes â and a little later on there is a poem called âCrowâ ⌠Anyway, it is apparent that Cook invests her work not only with a felicity of language but also with a depth of erudition. In âThree Hares Symbolâ she tells us:
Our hares, these three, have travelled the lands along the Silk Road.
As indeed they have: this sacred circular motif of three interlinked running hares, joined by their ears, stretches back many centuries and many thousands of miles to bring, as Cook says, âkind blessings through the agesâ. And I have felt, reading through this collection, that even though some of these poems work better than others, the ideas and impressions become more complex as the eye and ear become more at-tuned to the poetâs style. I cannot resist the song of âThe Lonely Whaleâ:
He sounds his message in deep space, a lost spacecraft, which spirals a chthonic mayday, over and over, his entire life in solitude.
But believe me, this lovely collection of Rose Cookâs poetry is a far cry from being a chthonic mayday. The poems are full of sensitivity and emotion, not to forget several outbursts of sheer humour and gaiety, as in the delightfully titled âA Situation Arising from a Complete Inability to Master Any Language but her Ownâ. And I am not going to give the game away on that one; youâll have to read it for your-self.
âHearthâ has been portrayed by Rebecca Gethin as a âtreasure trove of poemsâ and it would be hard to improve on that description. Recommended.
Hearth by Rose Cook â very good company | Cultured Llama
April 4, 2018 @ 9:18 am
[…] by Rose Cook continues to receive praise in reviews that appear in London Grip and The Frogmore Papers. Peter Ulraig Kennedy, in London Grip, […]