Poetry review – IMMORTAL WRECKAGE: Colin Pink is impressed by the many resonances and references behind the poems in Will Stone’s collection
Immortal Wreckage
Will Stone
Shearsman Books, 2024,
ISBN 978-1-84861-942-5
£10.95
I’m mostly aware of Will Stone through his excellent translations of late nineteenth and early twentieth century writers such as Georg Trakl, Georges Rodenbach and Emile Verhaeren, so although this is the fourth collection of his own poems it’s the first I’ve read. His deep knowledge of European culture and history shines through this collection.
The collection is divided into two parts: the first part focusses on what one might call, with a nod to Nietzsche, ‘the eternal recurrence of violence’ through history into our present time. These poems are public facing, making statements on the nature of society and its ills. The second part contains more personal poems, which also highlight the Heideggerian enframement or Gestell within which the personal exists, in relation, for instance, to the climate crisis in a poem like “Love under the Heat Dome”.
Most of the poems in the first half are a cross between ekphrasis and reportage; they are often triggered by an image: Breugel’s painting of the Triumph of Death; a photograph of Himmler talking with some Ukrainian peasants during the Nazi invasion in 1941; film footage of an abused ‘collaborationist’ French woman; the Tiergarten after the fall of Berlin with its ‘bullet pecked’ statues; These poems are bleak meditations on the allure of populist demagogues and the persistence of violence, confronted head-on. For instance, in “Labyrinth without Light” the way long-held (historical) resentments keep being played out is addressed:
See now the unseeing pass the threshold
to calmly enter the labyrinth without light.
The accumulated hatred, venom phials,
heirlooms passed down the generations.
In which secret facility are they stored?
The book’s cover design features a famous photograph of the ruins of Dresden after the devastating fire-bombing of the city by the allies towards the end of the Second World War; it looks disturbingly contemporary, reminiscent today of images of Gaza or Mariupol in Ukraine, which underlines the messages in these poems. The poems interrogate the darkness of the present time through the lens of the darkness of the past, the endemic lack of empathy and demonisation of the other.
Most of these poems have extensive notes at the back of the book which provide handy information about the references contained within the poems for those of us who don’t have as detailed a knowledge of European history as Stone. Personally, I like having notes in poetry collections; they save a lot of time Googling! But occasionally I felt the note highlighted a weakness in the poem. For instance, the first poem “Uncovering a European Predator” about working as a conservation volunteer in Epping Forest and accidentally uncovering a hibernating adder, is supposed to refer to Putin. Despite Putin’s obvious reptilian appearance, like a real-life Voldemort, I would never have thought of that, so I don’t think the poem works the way Stone thinks it might. On the other hand it is an excellent nature poem and it strongly reminded me of vivid and visceral animal poems by poets such as Ted Hughes and D H Lawrence; but the political resonance only existed (for me) in the title.
Likewise, in “Opportunists of Genocide”, despite the title it would be hard to know that the poem describes Polish locals rummaging through the ashes of holocaust victims from Treblinka for hidden Jewish treasure without the note saying that’s what it is. Of course the balancing act between being either too blatant or too vague is a constant problem in the writing of poetry.
The first part ends on the excellent poem “Downfall” (which curiously doesn’t have a note, even though I could have done with one to know what is referred to in the final lines). This poem compares the collapse of an ant colony with the collapse of humanity and references Flemish paintings of the Last Judgement:
Are we nothing more than those naked
self-disinterred souls of the Flemish Primitives
cantering hopefully across lawns to Michael
or flinching away from the demon’s fork?
The poem’s final lines, previously referred to, conjure a powerful image of violent insurrection, where the peace makers seem to be the victims:
they trot on makeshift spikes and poles,
the bloodied heads of those who called for
renewed dialogue, calm and restraint.
The opening poem in the second half, “Gift of Light” is a beautiful evocation of the numinous suddenly breaking through into the real through two epiphanies. The first is the tender gesture of a mother’s hand towards her child a crowded bus highlighted by ‘a splinter of light’.
That light was holy, unacknowledged,
it spoke then and never again,
the mark was hers but meant for all
And later ‘…the song of the old man at Matins / wrapped around the pillar of the basilica ‘ evokes a similar sensation:
and the young white-robed nun
who suddenly seemed more tender,
put out the candles one by one.
Several of the poems in the second part are elegies for people and places in Europe: “The Lost Quays of Antwerp” and Muzot in “The Desecrated Valley” where Rilke wrote his Sonnets to Orpheus; and there are poems about the artists Edvard Munch and Otto Dix.
Some of the most affecting poems in this half are elegies closer to home, such as “Pynes in Memoriam” which beautifully and sensually conveys childhood impressions, ‘that smell of polish, wood cabinets / beeswax, shoe leather and wool’ of the no longer existing department store in the poet’s home town of Epping. All that remains is the fine mosaic floor spelling Pynes. This poem evokes so many memories and indicates what gets lost in the shifting nature of society with the dominance of identical chain stores in every town.
Stone’s elegy for his father “Green Burial” about scattering his father’s ashes: ‘when the urn came to me / I bore it like precious water’, is particularly effective with its waves of joyful childhood memories that engulf the narrator as he conveys the ashes to a stream. The beautiful ending of this poem is suggestive of resurrection:
as half a century ago at Trebarwith
when he rose powerfully from the sea,
and I swaying astride his shoulders
rode high, fearless, untouchable.
Sep 19 2024
London Grip Poetry Review – Will Stone
Poetry review – IMMORTAL WRECKAGE: Colin Pink is impressed by the many resonances and references behind the poems in Will Stone’s collection
I’m mostly aware of Will Stone through his excellent translations of late nineteenth and early twentieth century writers such as Georg Trakl, Georges Rodenbach and Emile Verhaeren, so although this is the fourth collection of his own poems it’s the first I’ve read. His deep knowledge of European culture and history shines through this collection.
The collection is divided into two parts: the first part focusses on what one might call, with a nod to Nietzsche, ‘the eternal recurrence of violence’ through history into our present time. These poems are public facing, making statements on the nature of society and its ills. The second part contains more personal poems, which also highlight the Heideggerian enframement or Gestell within which the personal exists, in relation, for instance, to the climate crisis in a poem like “Love under the Heat Dome”.
Most of the poems in the first half are a cross between ekphrasis and reportage; they are often triggered by an image: Breugel’s painting of the Triumph of Death; a photograph of Himmler talking with some Ukrainian peasants during the Nazi invasion in 1941; film footage of an abused ‘collaborationist’ French woman; the Tiergarten after the fall of Berlin with its ‘bullet pecked’ statues; These poems are bleak meditations on the allure of populist demagogues and the persistence of violence, confronted head-on. For instance, in “Labyrinth without Light” the way long-held (historical) resentments keep being played out is addressed:
The book’s cover design features a famous photograph of the ruins of Dresden after the devastating fire-bombing of the city by the allies towards the end of the Second World War; it looks disturbingly contemporary, reminiscent today of images of Gaza or Mariupol in Ukraine, which underlines the messages in these poems. The poems interrogate the darkness of the present time through the lens of the darkness of the past, the endemic lack of empathy and demonisation of the other.
Most of these poems have extensive notes at the back of the book which provide handy information about the references contained within the poems for those of us who don’t have as detailed a knowledge of European history as Stone. Personally, I like having notes in poetry collections; they save a lot of time Googling! But occasionally I felt the note highlighted a weakness in the poem. For instance, the first poem “Uncovering a European Predator” about working as a conservation volunteer in Epping Forest and accidentally uncovering a hibernating adder, is supposed to refer to Putin. Despite Putin’s obvious reptilian appearance, like a real-life Voldemort, I would never have thought of that, so I don’t think the poem works the way Stone thinks it might. On the other hand it is an excellent nature poem and it strongly reminded me of vivid and visceral animal poems by poets such as Ted Hughes and D H Lawrence; but the political resonance only existed (for me) in the title.
Likewise, in “Opportunists of Genocide”, despite the title it would be hard to know that the poem describes Polish locals rummaging through the ashes of holocaust victims from Treblinka for hidden Jewish treasure without the note saying that’s what it is. Of course the balancing act between being either too blatant or too vague is a constant problem in the writing of poetry.
The first part ends on the excellent poem “Downfall” (which curiously doesn’t have a note, even though I could have done with one to know what is referred to in the final lines). This poem compares the collapse of an ant colony with the collapse of humanity and references Flemish paintings of the Last Judgement:
The poem’s final lines, previously referred to, conjure a powerful image of violent insurrection, where the peace makers seem to be the victims:
The opening poem in the second half, “Gift of Light” is a beautiful evocation of the numinous suddenly breaking through into the real through two epiphanies. The first is the tender gesture of a mother’s hand towards her child a crowded bus highlighted by ‘a splinter of light’.
And later ‘…the song of the old man at Matins / wrapped around the pillar of the basilica ‘ evokes a similar sensation:
Several of the poems in the second part are elegies for people and places in Europe: “The Lost Quays of Antwerp” and Muzot in “The Desecrated Valley” where Rilke wrote his Sonnets to Orpheus; and there are poems about the artists Edvard Munch and Otto Dix.
Some of the most affecting poems in this half are elegies closer to home, such as “Pynes in Memoriam” which beautifully and sensually conveys childhood impressions, ‘that smell of polish, wood cabinets / beeswax, shoe leather and wool’ of the no longer existing department store in the poet’s home town of Epping. All that remains is the fine mosaic floor spelling Pynes. This poem evokes so many memories and indicates what gets lost in the shifting nature of society with the dominance of identical chain stores in every town.
Stone’s elegy for his father “Green Burial” about scattering his father’s ashes: ‘when the urn came to me / I bore it like precious water’, is particularly effective with its waves of joyful childhood memories that engulf the narrator as he conveys the ashes to a stream. The beautiful ending of this poem is suggestive of resurrection: