A backwards glance

The latest Poetry Society bulletin fell through my letterbox last week and it contains a nice review of 'A Pint...' which looks at memory and 'the veil that separates the living from the dead'. The review concludes by considering the fine line between poignancy and sentimentality in a very interesting way:

'Each poem is a glass raised, tipped in the direction of who or whatever the poem is dedicated to, be it an ageing father or a long-dead industry. Yes, there's darkness here. But ultimately, the collection celebrates persistance, the reluctance to give up or give in, the reluctance to accept any ending.'

I've always thought that considering the past is never a chiefly sentimental act. The past so quickly becomes a different life that we can't feel close enough to it to get too doe-eyed. It's as if we're viewing someone else's life. Ghost stories are not simply an act of nostlagia, they're a way of re-inventing; both chilling and wistful.

Ken Head has recently reviewed the pamphlet online here for the flourishing blog Ink, Sweat and Tears. In his review, he also muses on some of the dangers inherent in re-imagining the past. Luckily, he's convinced by 'A Pint...':

'Though often darkly moving, her ghosts aren't sentimental. She knows well enough that, however precious, the past's a foreign country where Time's already been called and the poet herself has become a ghostly watcher...'

Of course, if ever there were a warning against looking backwards too much, it's Michael Donaghy's fine poem, 'Upon a Claude Glass':

Upon a Claude Glass

A lady might pretend to fix her face
but scan the room inside her compact mirror -

so gentlemen would scrutinize this glass
to gaze on Windermere and Rydal Water

and pick their way along the clifftop tracks
intent upon the romance in the box,

keeping untamed nature at their backs
and some would come to grief upon the rocks.

Don't look so smug. Don't think you're any safer
as you blunder through your years

straining to recall some aching pleasure
or blinded by some private scrim of tears.

I know. My world's encircled by this prop,
though all my life I've tried to force it shut.