Carla Scarano looks at poems by Valerie Lynch that explore relationships and experiences across the whole of life
In the Time of Rabbits
Valerie Lynch
Dempsey & Windle 2019
ISBN 9781907435782
ÂŁ 11.00
New themes and expanding images and metaphors are explored in Valerie Lynchâs second collection, In the Time of Rabbits. A wider conception of family relationships and identity is developed in recollections from her childhood and adulthood. The narrative concerns a womanâs lineage that goes from her grandmother back in the 1920s to her motherâs girlhood, marriage and relationship with her husband. The crystallised roles of wife and mother are contested in the narratorâs own story which includes break-ups and new lovers. Other themes are investigated such as aging, illness, gender issues, immigrants. The collection includes ekphrastic poetry and ends with a question suggesting that what we have just read is provisional though the aesthetic pleasure the poems prompt is undeniable.
The collection opens with a dedicatory poem to the poetâs son who helps young men to âgive names to their fears/the fears of childhood//and clothe them for todayâ. In a similar way, Lynchâs poems voice those fears and âclothe themâ for today as well as for a past which is viewed through the lens of experience in a new open vision that resists closure and engenders unexpected imageries.
Lynchâs narrator can shape herself like sand, make herself âsomething differentâ (âThe Shape and meâ), explore her life from a different angle. In her childhood âall things were possible/and waiting to be livedâ (âIn the Time of Rabbitsâ). The mother figure appears in several poems, as a young woman âso young, so vivid,/so unaware of her nineteen years/of innocenceâ (âBarefootâ); but she is also seen as formal and slightly frightened in âher wedding dress and wedding smileâ (âReading a photographâ). She is a shifting figure entrapped in her role of wife and mother revealing severity and self-denial:
The kettle sang carefully
around her head. The flowers and I,
dad and the kettleâs song
were anxious to please.
Perhaps
we brought her some rest
from the artillery
that garrisoned her smiles.
(âThe Strawberry Fieldsâ)
She suffers âAbsencesâ and silences and misses a real connection with her daughter:
I told you HALF a pound, she said,
with us standing there in the road.
And this time, get the proper change!
âŠ
Trying not to breathe, I chopped him up,
minced the bits, and stuffed them
in sausage skins. Put mum in too,
then took her out quick. She often
sees my thinks.
(âSausagesâ)
The poems about the mother suggest repressed potential, an âotherwiseâ that was silenced by education, social conventions and marriage. Nevertheless, the young narrator has a special connection with her grandmother, Granny T, who enlightens her about ancestors, their âfeasting and songâ. She lived in a âtwo up two down/cold sculleryâ called âsookiesâ, âin the briskness of Dorset hillsâ where there are no âpublished regulationsâ. If the mother expects perfection and obedience to social rules, the grandmother is looser and always welcoming, she leaves her be:
I cycled over to see you each day after school to sit
and not say a word, and have you not to say a word to me,
just leaving me be.
(âThe button boxâ)
The mother comes back in her adulthood. The poet watches âher face slideâ beneath her skin (âBecoming and vanishingâ); it is a legacy the poet acknowledges and dismisses at the same time in an attempt to achieve an identity which is necessarily different from her motherâs.
The relationship with her father is connected with bedtime stories from the war, as in the poem âGerman Boyâ. During the first world war the father spared the life of a German soldier who stared at his bayonet holding out his hands. According to the rules, the father should have struck with the bayonet and twisted it in the boyâs body; but he did not and let him go.
Some poems show the sufferings and illusions of a broken relationship that are counterbalanced by a new love flourishing in later life:
You said you donât do belonging;
you didnât pretend.
I didnât hear your words.
I loved the smell of your skin.
I loved.
(âHerb Robertâ)
The new love is not binding or stable, it is provisional but it seems to meet the poetâs desire and expectations. He fills unpredictable needs that her parents never fulfilled due to their stiff prescribed roles. The poetâs new lover was âalways ready to leaveâ and finally managed it when he suddenly died. However, not only is love temporary, but everything that concerns life and our humanity is necessarily provisional. This is because of our mortality as well as the sense of openness and playfulness that Lynchâs poetry suggests:
Morning holds the long slow sky
of winter, stretched thin over Chesilâs Reach.
Between shingle and sky, nothing moves.
Softly, a sea-mist slides across the shore,
its shroud holding me fast.
(âChesilâs Reachâ)
The old sun arcs low
days briefly stutter
and shiver
A voice sings on the river
a herring gull screams
and dies.
Tomorrow
daybreak
will open early.
Streets rouse the sky
a boy flings by
on a bike.
(âEquinoxâ)
In âChesilâs Reachâ death is evoked in the word âshroudâ foreseen in the alliterations with âshingleâ, âskyâ and âshoreâ. Contingency and mystery haunt the poem, while in âEquinoxâ a lighthearted mood is present in the meditative pauses of the line breaks and especially in the half rhyme of the conclusion. The final image of the boy riding a bike points towards the future and the rest of life. The ordinary is therefore connected with the universal where ancient myths merge with everyday life, as in the poem âPromisesâ, and with a surreal world that has a touch of humour:
I see the mackerel march off
their slab in militant array.
âŠ
âItâs still alive.â You stupid woman.
He grins. Dead long before you
got up today, I reckon.
I am watching mackerel eyes
as they meet mine.
You want it, or not?
(âMackerel eyesâ)
Lynch reflects on words, images and how they construct reality. In her poem âLooking is different from seeingâ The cow she sees in the field is âa sort of bundle/of brown and whiteâ that does not resemble the cow of her picture book: âThat isnât a cow. I know cowâ. Once again reality reveals itself as uncertain, sometimes disappointing and always conveying blurred images hard to catch or define:
I spin down my net
to catch the words
that fall in the black sleeps of night
before the sun drops in
and strangles them.
(âWord-hunter 2â)
This thought is further explored in the poems that describe pictures. Lynch âfeelsâ the painting rather than simply describing it; it is a synesthetic approach that makes the reader experience the artwork with all the senses:
The wind is tossing sulky Thames water
across the road and into my hair,
freezing my neck, filling my eyes with tears.
Turner has wrenched me inside out.
His âStormâ has lashed sea in my face
Iâm wet as a cabin-boy on his drowning ship.
(âWater, drowned in lightâ)
This new collection is not only rich in imageries, it also reveals a widening of Lynchâs poetic and literary horizons both in her prosody and in her perceptions. Considering her age (she is ninety-two), Valerie Lynch is the living proof of the never ending potentials of imagination that create alternative views, new beginnings and new possibilities.
London Grip Poetry Review – Valerie Lynch
August 29, 2019 by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, poetry reviews, year 2019 • Tags: books, Carla Scarano, poetry • 0 Comments
Carla Scarano looks at poems by Valerie Lynch that explore relationships and experiences across the whole of life
New themes and expanding images and metaphors are explored in Valerie Lynchâs second collection, In the Time of Rabbits. A wider conception of family relationships and identity is developed in recollections from her childhood and adulthood. The narrative concerns a womanâs lineage that goes from her grandmother back in the 1920s to her motherâs girlhood, marriage and relationship with her husband. The crystallised roles of wife and mother are contested in the narratorâs own story which includes break-ups and new lovers. Other themes are investigated such as aging, illness, gender issues, immigrants. The collection includes ekphrastic poetry and ends with a question suggesting that what we have just read is provisional though the aesthetic pleasure the poems prompt is undeniable.
The collection opens with a dedicatory poem to the poetâs son who helps young men to âgive names to their fears/the fears of childhood//and clothe them for todayâ. In a similar way, Lynchâs poems voice those fears and âclothe themâ for today as well as for a past which is viewed through the lens of experience in a new open vision that resists closure and engenders unexpected imageries.
Lynchâs narrator can shape herself like sand, make herself âsomething differentâ (âThe Shape and meâ), explore her life from a different angle. In her childhood âall things were possible/and waiting to be livedâ (âIn the Time of Rabbitsâ). The mother figure appears in several poems, as a young woman âso young, so vivid,/so unaware of her nineteen years/of innocenceâ (âBarefootâ); but she is also seen as formal and slightly frightened in âher wedding dress and wedding smileâ (âReading a photographâ). She is a shifting figure entrapped in her role of wife and mother revealing severity and self-denial:
She suffers âAbsencesâ and silences and misses a real connection with her daughter:
The poems about the mother suggest repressed potential, an âotherwiseâ that was silenced by education, social conventions and marriage. Nevertheless, the young narrator has a special connection with her grandmother, Granny T, who enlightens her about ancestors, their âfeasting and songâ. She lived in a âtwo up two down/cold sculleryâ called âsookiesâ, âin the briskness of Dorset hillsâ where there are no âpublished regulationsâ. If the mother expects perfection and obedience to social rules, the grandmother is looser and always welcoming, she leaves her be:
The mother comes back in her adulthood. The poet watches âher face slideâ beneath her skin (âBecoming and vanishingâ); it is a legacy the poet acknowledges and dismisses at the same time in an attempt to achieve an identity which is necessarily different from her motherâs.
The relationship with her father is connected with bedtime stories from the war, as in the poem âGerman Boyâ. During the first world war the father spared the life of a German soldier who stared at his bayonet holding out his hands. According to the rules, the father should have struck with the bayonet and twisted it in the boyâs body; but he did not and let him go.
Some poems show the sufferings and illusions of a broken relationship that are counterbalanced by a new love flourishing in later life:
The new love is not binding or stable, it is provisional but it seems to meet the poetâs desire and expectations. He fills unpredictable needs that her parents never fulfilled due to their stiff prescribed roles. The poetâs new lover was âalways ready to leaveâ and finally managed it when he suddenly died. However, not only is love temporary, but everything that concerns life and our humanity is necessarily provisional. This is because of our mortality as well as the sense of openness and playfulness that Lynchâs poetry suggests:
In âChesilâs Reachâ death is evoked in the word âshroudâ foreseen in the alliterations with âshingleâ, âskyâ and âshoreâ. Contingency and mystery haunt the poem, while in âEquinoxâ a lighthearted mood is present in the meditative pauses of the line breaks and especially in the half rhyme of the conclusion. The final image of the boy riding a bike points towards the future and the rest of life. The ordinary is therefore connected with the universal where ancient myths merge with everyday life, as in the poem âPromisesâ, and with a surreal world that has a touch of humour:
Lynch reflects on words, images and how they construct reality. In her poem âLooking is different from seeingâ The cow she sees in the field is âa sort of bundle/of brown and whiteâ that does not resemble the cow of her picture book: âThat isnât a cow. I know cowâ. Once again reality reveals itself as uncertain, sometimes disappointing and always conveying blurred images hard to catch or define:
This thought is further explored in the poems that describe pictures. Lynch âfeelsâ the painting rather than simply describing it; it is a synesthetic approach that makes the reader experience the artwork with all the senses:
This new collection is not only rich in imageries, it also reveals a widening of Lynchâs poetic and literary horizons both in her prosody and in her perceptions. Considering her age (she is ninety-two), Valerie Lynch is the living proof of the never ending potentials of imagination that create alternative views, new beginnings and new possibilities.