Poetry review – SOMETHING SO WILD AND NEW IN THIS FEELING: Pam Thompson is impressed by Sarah Doyleâs original poems drawn from the writings of Dorothy Wordsworth
Something so wild and new in this feeling
Sarah Doyle
V Press
ISBN 978-1-8380488-1-5
34pp ÂŁ6.50
William Wordsworthâs poetry owed much to his sister Dorothyâs vivid and precise descriptions of their life and surroundings, in Alfoxden, Grasmere, and on their travels in Germany, France and Scotland as recorded in her Journals. It is the 250th anniversary of Dorothy Wordsworthâs birth, and, in a prefatory Authorâs Note, Sarah Doyle explains that she wanted to âdraw outâ the poetry inherent in the journals, and in doing so, to reinforce how relevant Dorothy Wordsworthâs writing is for our times, not least for its ecological engagement. The poems in Doyleâs collection are âre-imaginingsâ of the journal entries in a variety of poetic forms. Collage is the chosen technique whereby the poems âare comprised entirely of phrases (or parts of phrases) mined from Dorothyâs writing.â This includes the poemâs titles and the title of the collection. Fittingly the poems reflect Dorothy Wordsworthâs main preoccupations in the natural world such as the weather, the sky, birds and birdsong, places walked:
Walked in the wood in the morning.
Walked to the sea-side in the afternoon.
Walked to the Woodlands, and to the waterfall.
Walked before dinner up the Coombe.
(âNow for my walkâ)
The stanzas in the rest of the poem follow a similar pattern, each line beginning with âWalkedâ, the second and fourth lines rhyming. The place-names catch our eye as the repetitions and rhymes catch our ear. You really do feel as if you have been on the journey too. The repetition of the word âcloudâ or âcloudsâ at the end of each couplet in âMore like sky than cloudsâ give the poem the feel of a ghazal. There are fifteen couplets reflecting the nuances of changing skies. I was reminded of a time-lapse video which moves from morning to night at a rapid pace. This isnât to say that the poem moves at a rapid pace but there is a distinct temporal movement through the day:
The afternoon changed from clear to cloudy,
Between the struggling clouds.
âŠThe moon travelled through clouds, yellow as she passed.
A heavenly evening â light in the clouds.
This distinct temporal movement is also evident in âIt came on a stormy nightâ. You could easily believe that this was Dorothy Wordsworthâs narrative of one particular storm but it is all to Sarah Doyleâs credit that she has judiciously chosen extracts from various places to make it appear so. So we move from a description of the gathering storm and how nature looked within it,
The branches were stunted and knotty, as if they
had been striving with storms, and had half yielded to them
and proceed to Dorothy Wordsworthâs feelings of being âafraidâ. Perhaps to displace those feelings of fear, the poem reflects on one tree, âan old larchâ bridging the road and which
⊠seemed
to have been singled out for injury when everything
else was lovely and thriving âŠ
Maybe âthe stormy lifeâ of the tree, in some way mirrors her own. The poem concludes, in true Romantic fashion, with a shift from perceiving just desolation to one which is more uplifting:
O, thought I! what a beautiful
thing God has made winter to be, by stripping
the trees, and letting us see their shapes and forms.
Carrie Etter nails it when she mentions Sarah Doyleâs âfelicities of phrasing, musicality and ideas.â Collaging other writings can feel haphazard and awkward or too forced but this is never the case in this pamphlet which feels like both a collaboration and translation. We can easily believe in âHomewardsâ as a poem written by Dorothy Wordsworth herself, knowing her love of home and reluctance to be away from its solace; the insistent beat of the repetition of the word âhomeâ, reinforcing this feeling although there is some unease:
I was tired when I reached home,
and could not sit down to reading.
Walked a little in the garden when I came home.
In a reworked passage about the famous daffodils, aspects of Dorothyâs description of them found their way to her brotherâs poem:
They grew upon the mossy stones
about and above them. Some rested
their heads upon these stones, as on
a pillow, for weariness and the rest
tossed and reeled and danced âŠ
(âAmong the mossy stonesâ)
I like to flick through a pamphlet and see poems arranged on the page in a variety of forms. This is a visual treat before I even start reading. Here thereâs even a small concrete poem, âbeautiful / to seeâ, about little boats at night, âwith wings of / fireâ which is in the shape of a small boat. Yet this is not just for the sake of cleverness. The poem opens up on the vision of the
fiery track which they cut as
they went along, and which closed /up
after them with a hundred thousand
sparkles, and streams of
glow-worm light.
More daringly expansive are poems set across two landscape pages: in âwhen the rainâ, the staggered repetitions stress the rainâs insistence and in âSnow … in the … night … and still … snowingâ, the generous spacings between words, and between lines, imitate the softness of snow and the various weights of its coverings, the spaces being entirely contracted at the end:
Itsnowedverymuch Snowuponthegroundeverywhere ItsnowedwhenIwenttobed
Sarah Doyleâs re-imaginings are astoundingly successful and I thoroughly recommend this pamphlet.
London Grip Poetry Review – Sarah Doyle
June 5, 2021
Poetry review – SOMETHING SO WILD AND NEW IN THIS FEELING: Pam Thompson is impressed by Sarah Doyleâs original poems drawn from the writings of Dorothy Wordsworth
William Wordsworthâs poetry owed much to his sister Dorothyâs vivid and precise descriptions of their life and surroundings, in Alfoxden, Grasmere, and on their travels in Germany, France and Scotland as recorded in her Journals. It is the 250th anniversary of Dorothy Wordsworthâs birth, and, in a prefatory Authorâs Note, Sarah Doyle explains that she wanted to âdraw outâ the poetry inherent in the journals, and in doing so, to reinforce how relevant Dorothy Wordsworthâs writing is for our times, not least for its ecological engagement. The poems in Doyleâs collection are âre-imaginingsâ of the journal entries in a variety of poetic forms. Collage is the chosen technique whereby the poems âare comprised entirely of phrases (or parts of phrases) mined from Dorothyâs writing.â This includes the poemâs titles and the title of the collection. Fittingly the poems reflect Dorothy Wordsworthâs main preoccupations in the natural world such as the weather, the sky, birds and birdsong, places walked:
The stanzas in the rest of the poem follow a similar pattern, each line beginning with âWalkedâ, the second and fourth lines rhyming. The place-names catch our eye as the repetitions and rhymes catch our ear. You really do feel as if you have been on the journey too. The repetition of the word âcloudâ or âcloudsâ at the end of each couplet in âMore like sky than cloudsâ give the poem the feel of a ghazal. There are fifteen couplets reflecting the nuances of changing skies. I was reminded of a time-lapse video which moves from morning to night at a rapid pace. This isnât to say that the poem moves at a rapid pace but there is a distinct temporal movement through the day:
This distinct temporal movement is also evident in âIt came on a stormy nightâ. You could easily believe that this was Dorothy Wordsworthâs narrative of one particular storm but it is all to Sarah Doyleâs credit that she has judiciously chosen extracts from various places to make it appear so. So we move from a description of the gathering storm and how nature looked within it,
and proceed to Dorothy Wordsworthâs feelings of being âafraidâ. Perhaps to displace those feelings of fear, the poem reflects on one tree, âan old larchâ bridging the road and which
Maybe âthe stormy lifeâ of the tree, in some way mirrors her own. The poem concludes, in true Romantic fashion, with a shift from perceiving just desolation to one which is more uplifting:
Carrie Etter nails it when she mentions Sarah Doyleâs âfelicities of phrasing, musicality and ideas.â Collaging other writings can feel haphazard and awkward or too forced but this is never the case in this pamphlet which feels like both a collaboration and translation. We can easily believe in âHomewardsâ as a poem written by Dorothy Wordsworth herself, knowing her love of home and reluctance to be away from its solace; the insistent beat of the repetition of the word âhomeâ, reinforcing this feeling although there is some unease:
In a reworked passage about the famous daffodils, aspects of Dorothyâs description of them found their way to her brotherâs poem:
I like to flick through a pamphlet and see poems arranged on the page in a variety of forms. This is a visual treat before I even start reading. Here thereâs even a small concrete poem, âbeautiful / to seeâ, about little boats at night, âwith wings of / fireâ which is in the shape of a small boat. Yet this is not just for the sake of cleverness. The poem opens up on the vision of the
More daringly expansive are poems set across two landscape pages: in âwhen the rainâ, the staggered repetitions stress the rainâs insistence and in âSnow … in the … night … and still … snowingâ, the generous spacings between words, and between lines, imitate the softness of snow and the various weights of its coverings, the spaces being entirely contracted at the end:
Sarah Doyleâs re-imaginings are astoundingly successful and I thoroughly recommend this pamphlet.