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
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.