Angela Topping admires Mark Mansfieldâs carefully controlled and crafted poems for their plain speaking
Soul Barker
Mark Mansfield
Creative Space
ISBN 978-1981259021
76pp $12
Mansfield is an American poet, whose work has been widely published on both sides of the pond. Soul Barker is his second collection. Interestingly, he is deeply versed in the English tradition, and references poets like Thomas Wyatt, William Blake and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in some of his poems â for example, in the sad and sensual âHow Like You This?â, where he remembers lost loves of his own:
I hear their voices clear as if
the years like fallen leaves
had flown back to their greenest hour â
when kismetâs loom unweaves:
each smiles, then disappears, as she
who I know is no more
keeps our rendezvous I failed
and waits â just as before.
This poem strongly recalls âThey Flee from Meâ but acts as a response to it. Whereas Anne Boleyn had left Wyatt, here the poetâs lost loves come back to him in dreams. Wyatt has to watch his former lover from a distance, grown strange, but Mansfieldâs ghosts are familiar and seek him out. I love the idea of the leaves going back in time to âtheir greenest hourâ, because it reminds me of Frostâs âNothing Gold Can Stayâ. (âHer early leafâs a flower;/ but only so an hour.â). There is something dark about this poem, however, as the sardonically ominous allusion in the poemâs title to a pivotal passage from âThey Flee from Meâ suggests. It is as if the poemâs speaker is saying how like you this? â this fatefully recurrent dream I have wrought by not keeping my promise? The reader gets the feeling that the ghosts are not necessarily well disposed towards the person who failed to make the rendezvous. There is a poem by the War Poet, Alan Seeger called âI Have a Rendezvous with Deathâ, a date that cannot be evaded, which is referenced here, to imply these ghosts will take the speaker to his grave. And of course, Wyatt survived Boleyn and must have watched her go to her execution, beyond his love and help. He was even âinterviewedâ by her accusers, but released, as it was proved his alliance with her was before she knew Henry VIII. For a poem of only twelve lines, there is a lot packed in here, yet it appears effortless.
There is a strong elegiac movement of tone, throughout this collection. Mansfield takes the reader to haunted bars, unravelling peopleâs tragedies, as in âBoogâs Bluesâ, where he recounts the story of an older boy who used to busk on the boardwalk, admired by the younger ones, like the speaker of the poem:
I was one of those gypsy kids
who followed Boogieâs harp.
Piping the dawn awake, heâd laugh,
Bojangling down the wharf
until one day he disappeared:
drafted, then killed in the War.
The first stanza and the last stanza of this poem are the same but mean different things. By the time the ending comes, the âstrangerâ who âstruts the boardsâ is Boogâs ghost, returning to the place he was happy, and still playing his ghostly harp. Another lost place is âBluâsâ, a club down on the shore, beyond the boardwalk, closed and then burned down. The tragedy there was the ownerâs girlfriend, drowned in a boating accident: âher cut-rate fate/ speedballs marinated in ludes and boozeâ. She is represented in the poem by a nude painting of her which hung behind the bar. The day after she died, Blu and the painting disappeared. The story is told backwards in the poem; there is a sense of recollection, a story that has forced its way out of memory. In âFranklin Squareâ Mansfield adds to the theme of music by employing the old song George Formby used to sing, âLeaning on a Lamppostâ, originally written by Noel Gay. But he twists the narrative, something he often does in these poems, to have a girl waiting for the speaker, humming âthat songâ while leaning on a lamppost, but at night, instead of daytime, vanishing after whispering to the speaker:
Then, bending near, whispered â but as to what
she said, I couldnât make out a word. A strong
gust suddenly arose, and as it did, she turned,
vanishing in the snow before she reached the curb.
Chilling, yes, and one only notices afterwards, this poem is also a brilliantly balanced sonnet.
There are also elegies for lost relationships, like the scene in a motel â one of those lonely overnight drive-in hotels in America which punctuate empty miles, so a traveller can rest from driving before continuing on their way. âBlue Motelâ is a mere eight lines of a tightly-knit lyric, but its poignancy is in the âone pillowâ, the dust motes âdancingâ and the sound of a song âsheâ liked on the radio. Itâs a study of loneliness. âMy Lost Saintsâ recalls both Thom Gunnâs âMy Sad Captainsâ, and Elizabeth Barrett Browningâs Sonnet 43, in which she mentions âmy lost saintsâ, martyrs she venerated as a child. It remembers a bar called The SIDE SHOW, and the friends he knew there, one whom he married but it didnât work out, a boy named Jack Fox who âis no moreâ, and the poet himself âa boy⌠near a Star on the Walk of Fame than never wasâ. Everyone can identify with this scenario: a place we used to go, the friends we met there. Itâs the theme of lost content, in which our old friends become our âlost saints.â
Lest this collection appears to be all sorrow and loss, there is a darkly witty vampire poem, âVLADâSâ thatâs chocka with literary jokes: âEach songâs the mirrored image of the next/ or the one before. So here I am again/ at least four sets tonight, vamping aroundâ. Mansfield manages to sustain this throughout, and the last dance is a ladiesâ choice, which hints how attractive Dracula is. This bar is much more glamorous than the human bars in the book, which all appear tawdry or closed down and firmly in the past.
The theme of horror is not restricted to vampires. âA Stopped Watchâ takes its title from a Ray Bradbury short story, and another poem. âTo Helenaâ references Poeâs âTo Helenâ. In the former, Mansfield shares a story fit to strike horror into the hearts of readers, and foreshadows the Trump era. It concerns the assassination of Kennedy. The poet as a young boy, is at junior high in Alabama, because his fatherâs postings in the army mean moving around. Heâs known as âYankeeâ not by his name. When the teacher comes in with the news, there is at first stunned silence, then, unlike the outcry of sorrow which most people felt, there is an outbreak of celebration, cheering, clapping, jumping for joy. Mansfield builds up carefully to the killer last line, by clutching Bradburyâs book, Something Wicked This Way Comes two stanzas before the boy in the next desk winks and speaks to him: âThank Gawd/ that nigga-loving Catholicâs dead.â The Alabama of To Kill a Mockingbird has not improved one iota.
Mansfieldâs social conscience also reveals itself in the opening poem, âThe Drowning Boatâ which speaks to me of babies, born and unborn, who die needlessly trying to escape war and drought. The poemâs epigraph comes from Louis MacNeiceâs âPrayer Before Birthâ, a dramatic monologue in the form of a prayer spoken by an unborn infant intuiting the horrors of humankindâs inhumanity that await. Mansfieldâs poem, however, is narrated by one âwhose small/charmedâ life â favoured by fortune and not victim to âthe blast/sites of chanceâ â stands out âin high reliefâ from those of the worldâs refugees, destined to be lost âaboard a drowning boat ⌠as the water surged at lastâ. Where MacNeiceâs unborn speaker sends the world an agonizing prayer, âThe Drowning Boatâ concludes with the death rattle from an infantâs âday-old lungsâ aboard a doomed boat being likened to âthe crack of doom/which no one heardâ announcing a âghostlyâ eschatological presence â that like MacNeiceâs speaker is ânot yet bornâ. Poets have a duty to speak up about such things, and Mansfield is able to do this subtly and without climbing on a soap-box, but inviting the reader in with his imagery and form.
The interest in form is much in evidence. These poems are carefully controlled and crafted, the metre sure-footed and the rhymes skilful and subtle. There is a smattering of typographical experimentation, always to the purpose. The form never distracts, however. There are many more poems I leave for the reader to discover. This is a collection which repays re-reading many times. The themes of music, horror, lost content and passing of time, haunting and humanity, are big ones, but so deftly handled. These poems do what poems should: they speak to the reader in the silence of their minds, and echo there.
London Grip Poetry Review – Mark Mansfield
October 8, 2018 by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, poetry reviews, year 2018 • Tags: Angela Topping, books, poetry • 0 Comments
Angela Topping admires Mark Mansfieldâs carefully controlled and crafted poems for their plain speaking
Mansfield is an American poet, whose work has been widely published on both sides of the pond. Soul Barker is his second collection. Interestingly, he is deeply versed in the English tradition, and references poets like Thomas Wyatt, William Blake and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in some of his poems â for example, in the sad and sensual âHow Like You This?â, where he remembers lost loves of his own:
This poem strongly recalls âThey Flee from Meâ but acts as a response to it. Whereas Anne Boleyn had left Wyatt, here the poetâs lost loves come back to him in dreams. Wyatt has to watch his former lover from a distance, grown strange, but Mansfieldâs ghosts are familiar and seek him out. I love the idea of the leaves going back in time to âtheir greenest hourâ, because it reminds me of Frostâs âNothing Gold Can Stayâ. (âHer early leafâs a flower;/ but only so an hour.â). There is something dark about this poem, however, as the sardonically ominous allusion in the poemâs title to a pivotal passage from âThey Flee from Meâ suggests. It is as if the poemâs speaker is saying how like you this? â this fatefully recurrent dream I have wrought by not keeping my promise? The reader gets the feeling that the ghosts are not necessarily well disposed towards the person who failed to make the rendezvous. There is a poem by the War Poet, Alan Seeger called âI Have a Rendezvous with Deathâ, a date that cannot be evaded, which is referenced here, to imply these ghosts will take the speaker to his grave. And of course, Wyatt survived Boleyn and must have watched her go to her execution, beyond his love and help. He was even âinterviewedâ by her accusers, but released, as it was proved his alliance with her was before she knew Henry VIII. For a poem of only twelve lines, there is a lot packed in here, yet it appears effortless.
There is a strong elegiac movement of tone, throughout this collection. Mansfield takes the reader to haunted bars, unravelling peopleâs tragedies, as in âBoogâs Bluesâ, where he recounts the story of an older boy who used to busk on the boardwalk, admired by the younger ones, like the speaker of the poem:
The first stanza and the last stanza of this poem are the same but mean different things. By the time the ending comes, the âstrangerâ who âstruts the boardsâ is Boogâs ghost, returning to the place he was happy, and still playing his ghostly harp. Another lost place is âBluâsâ, a club down on the shore, beyond the boardwalk, closed and then burned down. The tragedy there was the ownerâs girlfriend, drowned in a boating accident: âher cut-rate fate/ speedballs marinated in ludes and boozeâ. She is represented in the poem by a nude painting of her which hung behind the bar. The day after she died, Blu and the painting disappeared. The story is told backwards in the poem; there is a sense of recollection, a story that has forced its way out of memory. In âFranklin Squareâ Mansfield adds to the theme of music by employing the old song George Formby used to sing, âLeaning on a Lamppostâ, originally written by Noel Gay. But he twists the narrative, something he often does in these poems, to have a girl waiting for the speaker, humming âthat songâ while leaning on a lamppost, but at night, instead of daytime, vanishing after whispering to the speaker:
Chilling, yes, and one only notices afterwards, this poem is also a brilliantly balanced sonnet.
There are also elegies for lost relationships, like the scene in a motel â one of those lonely overnight drive-in hotels in America which punctuate empty miles, so a traveller can rest from driving before continuing on their way. âBlue Motelâ is a mere eight lines of a tightly-knit lyric, but its poignancy is in the âone pillowâ, the dust motes âdancingâ and the sound of a song âsheâ liked on the radio. Itâs a study of loneliness. âMy Lost Saintsâ recalls both Thom Gunnâs âMy Sad Captainsâ, and Elizabeth Barrett Browningâs Sonnet 43, in which she mentions âmy lost saintsâ, martyrs she venerated as a child. It remembers a bar called The SIDE SHOW, and the friends he knew there, one whom he married but it didnât work out, a boy named Jack Fox who âis no moreâ, and the poet himself âa boy⌠near a Star on the Walk of Fame than never wasâ. Everyone can identify with this scenario: a place we used to go, the friends we met there. Itâs the theme of lost content, in which our old friends become our âlost saints.â
Lest this collection appears to be all sorrow and loss, there is a darkly witty vampire poem, âVLADâSâ thatâs chocka with literary jokes: âEach songâs the mirrored image of the next/ or the one before. So here I am again/ at least four sets tonight, vamping aroundâ. Mansfield manages to sustain this throughout, and the last dance is a ladiesâ choice, which hints how attractive Dracula is. This bar is much more glamorous than the human bars in the book, which all appear tawdry or closed down and firmly in the past.
The theme of horror is not restricted to vampires. âA Stopped Watchâ takes its title from a Ray Bradbury short story, and another poem. âTo Helenaâ references Poeâs âTo Helenâ. In the former, Mansfield shares a story fit to strike horror into the hearts of readers, and foreshadows the Trump era. It concerns the assassination of Kennedy. The poet as a young boy, is at junior high in Alabama, because his fatherâs postings in the army mean moving around. Heâs known as âYankeeâ not by his name. When the teacher comes in with the news, there is at first stunned silence, then, unlike the outcry of sorrow which most people felt, there is an outbreak of celebration, cheering, clapping, jumping for joy. Mansfield builds up carefully to the killer last line, by clutching Bradburyâs book, Something Wicked This Way Comes two stanzas before the boy in the next desk winks and speaks to him: âThank Gawd/ that nigga-loving Catholicâs dead.â The Alabama of To Kill a Mockingbird has not improved one iota.
Mansfieldâs social conscience also reveals itself in the opening poem, âThe Drowning Boatâ which speaks to me of babies, born and unborn, who die needlessly trying to escape war and drought. The poemâs epigraph comes from Louis MacNeiceâs âPrayer Before Birthâ, a dramatic monologue in the form of a prayer spoken by an unborn infant intuiting the horrors of humankindâs inhumanity that await. Mansfieldâs poem, however, is narrated by one âwhose small/charmedâ life â favoured by fortune and not victim to âthe blast/sites of chanceâ â stands out âin high reliefâ from those of the worldâs refugees, destined to be lost âaboard a drowning boat ⌠as the water surged at lastâ. Where MacNeiceâs unborn speaker sends the world an agonizing prayer, âThe Drowning Boatâ concludes with the death rattle from an infantâs âday-old lungsâ aboard a doomed boat being likened to âthe crack of doom/which no one heardâ announcing a âghostlyâ eschatological presence â that like MacNeiceâs speaker is ânot yet bornâ. Poets have a duty to speak up about such things, and Mansfield is able to do this subtly and without climbing on a soap-box, but inviting the reader in with his imagery and form.
The interest in form is much in evidence. These poems are carefully controlled and crafted, the metre sure-footed and the rhymes skilful and subtle. There is a smattering of typographical experimentation, always to the purpose. The form never distracts, however. There are many more poems I leave for the reader to discover. This is a collection which repays re-reading many times. The themes of music, horror, lost content and passing of time, haunting and humanity, are big ones, but so deftly handled. These poems do what poems should: they speak to the reader in the silence of their minds, and echo there.