Roger Caldwell finds that Alice Major composes poetry with a brain as well as a heart
Welcome to the Anthropocene
Alice Major
University of Alberta Press
ISBN 978-1-77212-368-5
121 pp. ÂŁ15.50
It is a contemporary truism that poetry should not have a design on us, that it should be free of didacticism â an admonition that involves a certain blindness to much poetry of the past (of the eighteenth-century in particular) and unduly limits the scope of poetry in general. Political poetry, for example, is necessarily didactic. In the long title-poem of her new collection, modelled on Popeâs âAn Essay on Manâ, Alice Major, like Pope himself, is nothing if not didactic: it is explicitly concerned with manâs place in the universe in the light of contemporary science, ecology, and climate-change. There are, admittedly, moments of bathos â âBut now consider slime mouldâ â and sometimes too easy an accusation of mankind playing God. She sees us as âmeddling / feckless godlingsâ who âwill not admit to limitsâ â and maybe we are â but it is worth considering that any large mammal that existed in such huge numbers as ourselves would equally and inevitably bring devastation to the earth. I am uncomfortable too with some of her formulations: she tells us that âthe universe can calculateâ, but the universe canât calculate anything, it is only human beings who can do that. There are touches of anthropomorphism here which are absent elsewhere in this collection.
In a work of such scope it is inevitable that it should occasion quibbles, but, then, itâs rare enough that a contemporary poem invites you to argue or think. Pope, however, is a hard act to follow, and if we still read âAn Essay on Manâ, it is less for the lessons he hoped to impart than for the sharpness and brilliance of his verse. Major can scarcely compete with this, but she rises at times to eloquence. In âWe need each other. Deep within our bones / we know that none of us survives aloneâ she is Audenesque. In âIndraâs gift to us: to see / in one small pearl, the gemmed immensityâ we are reminded of Blake. Elsewhere she is exuberant and celebratory:
Welcome, welcome to the Anthropocene
raccoon, coyote, house mouse, peregrine,
squirrel, red fox, Rattus norvegicus â
all you creatures who can live with us.
A well-established figure in Canadian poetry, and poet laureate of Edmonton, Alice Major is that rarest of beings, a poet whose imagination is fired by science and mathematics. This can result in some rather uncomfortable lexis â references to melanopsin, chromatophores, and cryptochromes ÂŹâ and, indeed, some forced analogies: in one poem, where a sex change operation is seen in the context of imaginary numbers, I was more baffled than enlightened. But she frequently hits home, seeing human beings âfilling the mundane area below / the bell curve with our standard variationsâ. In the brainâs propensity to interpret images as human faces she sees us as dependent on âour necessary, narcissistic metaphorsâ. We try to make ourselves at home in a universe indifferent to human requirements with âour pathetic need for companyâ. In âNecker cube illusionâ where the eye, refusing to tolerate ambiguity, switches periodically between two interpretations, she proclaims the necessity to hold
ambiguity together, one
assemblage of lines
that points to everything, all
at once.
In poems of quiet observation, spiced with a wry satirical wit, she brings to life the everyday world of the city, whether it is âThe good-time gal receptionist at happy hourâ or (at an office lunch) âThe conference table set / with plastic forks and margarine / in tubsâ. An eye for significant detail, and a sure sense of rhythm, sometimes a tumbling into rhyme, make for some compelling poems: with her broad range of sympathies and wide-ranging curiosity we have a sense of inclusiveness rare in contemporary poetry (which often prefers to live in a world of its own), and a comprehensive vision not afraid of dealing with public issues. In âClimate Change Debateâ she foresees the time when
ice will pass
and the creek bed will be fired
to cracked, crazed mud, a fringe
of desiccated willow, gasping grass.
This is poetry with a brain as well as a heart â it not only makes us feel but also succeeds in making us think.
London Grip Poetry Review – Alice Major
August 6, 2018 by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, poetry reviews, science, year 2018 • Tags: books, poetry, Roger Caldwell, science • 0 Comments
Roger Caldwell finds that Alice Major composes poetry with a brain as well as a heart
It is a contemporary truism that poetry should not have a design on us, that it should be free of didacticism â an admonition that involves a certain blindness to much poetry of the past (of the eighteenth-century in particular) and unduly limits the scope of poetry in general. Political poetry, for example, is necessarily didactic. In the long title-poem of her new collection, modelled on Popeâs âAn Essay on Manâ, Alice Major, like Pope himself, is nothing if not didactic: it is explicitly concerned with manâs place in the universe in the light of contemporary science, ecology, and climate-change. There are, admittedly, moments of bathos â âBut now consider slime mouldâ â and sometimes too easy an accusation of mankind playing God. She sees us as âmeddling / feckless godlingsâ who âwill not admit to limitsâ â and maybe we are â but it is worth considering that any large mammal that existed in such huge numbers as ourselves would equally and inevitably bring devastation to the earth. I am uncomfortable too with some of her formulations: she tells us that âthe universe can calculateâ, but the universe canât calculate anything, it is only human beings who can do that. There are touches of anthropomorphism here which are absent elsewhere in this collection.
In a work of such scope it is inevitable that it should occasion quibbles, but, then, itâs rare enough that a contemporary poem invites you to argue or think. Pope, however, is a hard act to follow, and if we still read âAn Essay on Manâ, it is less for the lessons he hoped to impart than for the sharpness and brilliance of his verse. Major can scarcely compete with this, but she rises at times to eloquence. In âWe need each other. Deep within our bones / we know that none of us survives aloneâ she is Audenesque. In âIndraâs gift to us: to see / in one small pearl, the gemmed immensityâ we are reminded of Blake. Elsewhere she is exuberant and celebratory:
A well-established figure in Canadian poetry, and poet laureate of Edmonton, Alice Major is that rarest of beings, a poet whose imagination is fired by science and mathematics. This can result in some rather uncomfortable lexis â references to melanopsin, chromatophores, and cryptochromes ÂŹâ and, indeed, some forced analogies: in one poem, where a sex change operation is seen in the context of imaginary numbers, I was more baffled than enlightened. But she frequently hits home, seeing human beings âfilling the mundane area below / the bell curve with our standard variationsâ. In the brainâs propensity to interpret images as human faces she sees us as dependent on âour necessary, narcissistic metaphorsâ. We try to make ourselves at home in a universe indifferent to human requirements with âour pathetic need for companyâ. In âNecker cube illusionâ where the eye, refusing to tolerate ambiguity, switches periodically between two interpretations, she proclaims the necessity to hold
In poems of quiet observation, spiced with a wry satirical wit, she brings to life the everyday world of the city, whether it is âThe good-time gal receptionist at happy hourâ or (at an office lunch) âThe conference table set / with plastic forks and margarine / in tubsâ. An eye for significant detail, and a sure sense of rhythm, sometimes a tumbling into rhyme, make for some compelling poems: with her broad range of sympathies and wide-ranging curiosity we have a sense of inclusiveness rare in contemporary poetry (which often prefers to live in a world of its own), and a comprehensive vision not afraid of dealing with public issues. In âClimate Change Debateâ she foresees the time when
This is poetry with a brain as well as a heart â it not only makes us feel but also succeeds in making us think.