London Grip Poetry Review – Penelope Shuttle
Poetry Review â FATHER LEAR: Peter Ualrig Kennedy is transfixed by Penelope Shuttleâs mastery of her art in her most recent collection
Father Lear Penelope Shuttle Poetry Salzburg ISBN 978-3-901993-79-4 37pp ÂŁ 7.00
Penelope Shuttle is a poetâs poet and, my goodness, this collection is a veritable treasure house of amazing poetry. From line to line there is constant surprise, while her words run smoothly through, making perfect sense of the unexpected. In âBig Shipsâ:
When there are stars in winter they glitter the way pain does when it comes
These lines have such heft, for we know that the poet has experienced the deep pain of loss âmaking me think / how sadness can bed down in a heartâŠâ In the next poem, âHearts by Nightâ, there is a sequence of metaphors to astonish the reader:
Hearts are quiet as a she-wolf at the wellhead or the spiderâs darling poison cup All night theyâre blown sevenfold about the city young and old and hurt at the gate
âKew Gardens, 1913â employs some neat metonymy: âGreen-painted tables are run off their feet / in the prideful park with its fake Pagodaâ and later continues fancifully with âThe shalloon apron struts along the borders.â âHallam Streetâ suggests London as a Faeryland:
thinking thus I board the 88 to rattle-tat round our river-beauty city Faery London the worldâs Achilles heel till Iâm tired as a nail from Our Lordâs cross
I love ârattle-tattle roundâ but itâs that final line which makes one sit up straight. This poem is also unusual (or unique) in that it casually tosses âsturdy omophoresâ into the mix. I am not often wrong-footed by coming across an unfamiliar word; and am I to be fazed by a term for a coarse fabric? I shall squirrel âshalloonâ, as well as âomophoresâ, away into my lexicon cupboard. As well as the appearance of some esoteric words, there is opportunity in each page for a new form: sometimes a poem of couplets, sometimes of tercets, often a thoughtful free verse poem â possibly one strewn with caesuras and white space.
âSelf-Portrait as Katharine of Aragonâ is a poem which seems particularly personal. It is notable for the shock of its single final line âThey say the axe has been ordered from Franceâ â but this is not a metaphor. The poet, in the guise of the cast-aside Katharine, suddenly confronts us with the fate of her usurper Anne Boleyn. A grim realisation â but is Katharine saying to herself âShe had it comingâ? Intriguing. And intriguing again is âThe Lucidity (or Otherwise) of a Swanâ. We are now deep into a dreamscape, but one with some deft imagery:
the swan is also the beauty of things, white wings folded back like a restaurant napkin,
âUncommon Prayerâ is an incipit: âall about lying your way / to the truthâ and leading us to âas step by step / the wren / runs up the tiny airâ â what a masterly image! This is immediately followed by a departure from earlier form with a partly-found poem, in non-rhyming couplets, inspired by a visit to the Ashmolean Museum; it culminates, after many unthreatening museum observations, with this unsettling ending:
In the Victory Room captive women and children are led away by soldiers brandishing the decapitated heads of their menfolk.
In the next poem, Shuttle comments âIâm past thinking / but I think about colours all the timeâ which must be the description of a mind folding in upon itself. And so we move to âVerbsâ, a poem with such a deft touch that the simple words pull at the heartstrings:
the verbs are too awkward Dad the nouns too rich ⊠but you are smaller than a tear now
A page or two on, and, after the simplicity of âVerbsâ, the poet states that âmy heart once again behaves like a peat bog, / overflowing, undergoing paludification by absorbing sixteen times its own weightâ â a simile strong enough to overcome all adversaries. But if that has left you wondering in admiration, âthe opposite of nightâ may surprise you with an animal fact:
unlike a female kangaroo a day doesnât have three vaginas
Well, thereâs no arguing with that. And days âare never sorry about breaking up with you / was never meant to be they shrug / leaving no forwarding addressâ â a clever notion.
In this review I have touched on only a selection of Penelope Shuttleâs poems. All of them, from âFather Learâ to the concluding â1976â, make us care, make us want to care. The collection finishes with âlanguage as a gleaming shieldâ which is not a poem but a âbehind the poemâ article, also a threnody for her late husband Peter Redgrove. She ponders âPerhaps a poem is a spell spelt out to test how much reality we can bear. Not much, as we know.â
Finally, from âit came as if calledâ:
it came setting star against star doornail against door it came as if called and as if I cared
At the end I have read and understood and revelled in the poetâs use of language, and I only want to say to her: Penelope â we care.
Peter Ualrig Kennedy
About Poets: PENELOPE SHUTTLE - A ?ORT SPEL
October 28, 2020 @ 1:52 pm
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