Poetry review – ANXIOUS BRICOLAGE: Jennifer Johnson is intrigued and impressed by an unusual long poem from Richard Leigh
Anxious Bricolage
Richard Leigh
Spuyten Duyvil, New York City
ISBN: 9781963908442
£10 from Amazon
Anxious Bricolage is a book-length (73 page) poetic meditation in 58 sections which, as the title suggests, contains reflections on many different subjects. There is, however, an underlying theme, that of the limits of our perception and this most unusual book intelligently challenges the way we normally imagine we perceive our world.
The poem is written in short-lined stanzas with lines that are variously indented with plenty of white space surrounding each stanza perhaps drawing attention to the co-dependence between text and paper. This is a style more common in the US than in Britain and may remind the reader of the Black Mountain poets. The stanza layout draws extra attention to the words and their attempt to proceed from describing something elusive to something perhaps a little more definite.
Dust is the first subject of the poem, dust that ‘accumulates’ and falls ‘gently as snow’ rather as the text does. We are reminded that ‘it goes about its business/of taking the edge off things’ so obscuring the clarity we search for. The reader is made aware of the origin of the dust in Section 6
What has been said until now
is ancient architecture
crumbling to ruin
implying a decaying language inadequate for making sense of either our interior or exterior worlds as in
Let tongue taste
unrewarded,
inconsolable,
the words
which slide us
in and out of dreams.
As well as great imaginative imagery – for example ‘as if the years don’t pass/but stay where they are,/gathering weight’ – the poem has an unusually high aural quality and in much of it there is the response of a musician who experiences ‘a tactile music’ and, in Section 2,
each line telling you
there’s no such thing as repetition:
the music coming
each time it’s heard
from somewhere deeper.
Even when there appears to be some clarity it is only momentary as in Section 15.
We must take dictation
as fast as we can:
cartography
by lightning flashes.
There are other times when our world becomes unobscured by darkness, for instance when ‘the light, once dim/and dusted with cobwebs,/glitters harshly at the eyes.’
Consideration of language is, of course, important in this poem. In the following lines in Section 39 the phrase becomes a physical entity.
Sometimes a phrase
slowly
lurches on its axis
never quite over-
balancing,
and yet with a quality
of infinite distance
and restores us
unexpectedly
to an equilibrium
which we don’t think we deserve.
There are so many more examples of seeing or half-seeing things in this poem which space does not permit me to cite (and my taking phrases out of context probably does not do the poem full justice). The poem ends in Section 58.
Now you see it,
now (at least at first) you don’t
and now
the puzzlement remains
as though
seeking exactly
what had for so long
been elusive
you stood on tiptoe
for a closer look
at the stars.
This poem should be read because it does not follow the usual trains of thought and will provide the reader with something genuinely thought-provoking and mentally stimulating. It gives a different idea of what a poem can be and may even change the way the reader may think about how we see things.
Jan 30 2025
London Grip Poetry Review – Richard Leigh
Poetry review – ANXIOUS BRICOLAGE: Jennifer Johnson is intrigued and impressed by an unusual long poem from Richard Leigh
Anxious Bricolage is a book-length (73 page) poetic meditation in 58 sections which, as the title suggests, contains reflections on many different subjects. There is, however, an underlying theme, that of the limits of our perception and this most unusual book intelligently challenges the way we normally imagine we perceive our world.
The poem is written in short-lined stanzas with lines that are variously indented with plenty of white space surrounding each stanza perhaps drawing attention to the co-dependence between text and paper. This is a style more common in the US than in Britain and may remind the reader of the Black Mountain poets. The stanza layout draws extra attention to the words and their attempt to proceed from describing something elusive to something perhaps a little more definite.
Dust is the first subject of the poem, dust that ‘accumulates’ and falls ‘gently as snow’ rather as the text does. We are reminded that ‘it goes about its business/of taking the edge off things’ so obscuring the clarity we search for. The reader is made aware of the origin of the dust in Section 6
implying a decaying language inadequate for making sense of either our interior or exterior worlds as in
As well as great imaginative imagery – for example ‘as if the years don’t pass/but stay where they are,/gathering weight’ – the poem has an unusually high aural quality and in much of it there is the response of a musician who experiences ‘a tactile music’ and, in Section 2,
Even when there appears to be some clarity it is only momentary as in Section 15.
There are other times when our world becomes unobscured by darkness, for instance when ‘the light, once dim/and dusted with cobwebs,/glitters harshly at the eyes.’
Consideration of language is, of course, important in this poem. In the following lines in Section 39 the phrase becomes a physical entity.
There are so many more examples of seeing or half-seeing things in this poem which space does not permit me to cite (and my taking phrases out of context probably does not do the poem full justice). The poem ends in Section 58.
This poem should be read because it does not follow the usual trains of thought and will provide the reader with something genuinely thought-provoking and mentally stimulating. It gives a different idea of what a poem can be and may even change the way the reader may think about how we see things.