From One to Another
A Body Made of You asks to be read straight through without pause: as one might rush through the rooms of an exhibition hurriedly, excitedly, to get an impression of the whole. And there is a definite pleasure in this rush – a pleasure that is almost sexual – because the book is seductive in a physical sense, managing to tap into the appetites of the body directly through the language and images of the subconscious.
The book is divided into fourteen sections, with each section dedicated to a particular subject or “muse.” Lee-Houghton’s process involved getting to know her ‘sitters’ through interviews and paintings (see A Body Made of You – back cover); a practice which has yielded poems that question both how we relate to one another, and whether it is possible for us to really know one another at all.
Annie, who stands “behind a shadow screen/lit like a moth’s wing” (‘Still’ p. 41, lines 1-2), is presented as a fragile character. When the poet promises not to show “pounds and ounces, greying hairs, or a terrified pubis” (‘Still’ p. 41, line 11), she reveals Annie’s vulnerability in the most direct way possible. The cruelty of the one who looks and who draws on the energies of a muse becomes apparent. When the poet writes: “Trust me, Annie, I am not a man, and my art will not seduce you” (‘Still’ p. 41, line 12), the reader catches Annie’s fear, her mistrust of men, and also her weakness for them. In this line we also understand the poet, who recognises the ‘artfulness’ of her male counterparts. But do we really believe her when she writes: “my art will not seduce you”?
The poem displays elements of care and cruelty in the poet’s attitude towards her subject, and this makes for a brave examination of women’s often ambiguous relationships with one another. It also dramatizes the problems attached to a female poet adopting what has been called – by feminist critics – the ‘male gaze.’ But Lee-Houghton takes on the role of ‘seer’ without sentimentality, and embraces conflicting and contradictory states of being wholeheartedly.
‘A Body Made of You’, which also addresses Annie, extends the poet’s exploration of this female-female relationship. “It’s not even your body that interests me, Annie” (‘A Body Made of You’ pp. 42-43, p. 42, line 9), the poet writes, going on to say:
there are women in you
who cut trousers out of wheat sacks,
darned stockings and socks while they starved
to feed their kids, who lost husbands to shell blasts.
(‘A Body Made of You’ pp. 42-43, p. 42, lines 15-18)
In contrast to the vulnerable, fragile Annie of ‘Still’, Lee-Houghton shows us the other women Annie is: strong, stoical and surviving. The ‘Body Made of You’ is many, and there are as many different versions of ‘I’ as there are versions of ‘You’, since we relate to one another according to the shifts in what we call our identity. By the end of the poem, Annie’s image is “close to blurring” (‘A Body Made of You’ pp. 42-43, p. 43, line 37); but the blurred image is not – as might traditionally be the case – an imperfect image. It is simply the image that results from the multiplicity of selves Annie is.
In ‘Dog-mask’, one of the poems inspired by Stephen, Lee-Houghton runs with her images and appears to free associate from one thought to the next. This gives her lines fluency and confidence – and takes real guts when many English poets are reluctant to explore the associative powers of the subconscious. Lines like:
I give you handfuls of glass, a glass full of blood,
a sterile wish for silence
or a mask with dog teeth
to put on a face that women won’t want
(‘Dog-mask’ pp. 15-16, p. 16, lines 29-32)
have more in common with Federico Garcia-Lorca or Lidija Dimkovska than with any English poets, and Lee-Houghton makes use of such allegorical symbols – masks, blood, glass – in a way that avoids the conventional, straightforwardly descriptive poetic portrait.
By exploring her concerns within the discourse of visual art practice, Lee-Houghton concentrates the reader’s mind on questions relating to the possibilities and limits of the world of appearances. Her word-portraits acknowledge the difficulties of a linear, descriptive language while reaching for different forms of representation. The fearlessness of the voice in these poems is exciting, as is the wealth of surreal imagery, which – like the images in a dream-world – make a strange, sideways sense.
Melissa Lee-Houghton’s A Body Made of You is published by Penned in the Margins, 2011
Amy McCauley is completing the MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work has been published in a number of magazines including The Rialto, The North and Tears in the Fence. http://www.thecadaverine.com/?p=3634