Inside the Brightness of Red. Mary MacRae. Second Light Publications, 2010. £8.95.
This is a posthumous collection of Mary MacRae’s poetry. Many poems were written whilst she was in remission from cancer. Inevitably this has influenced the work. This is not to say it is morbid – quite the contrary, MacRae’s personas live for the moment whether it be to contemplate a painting or an exquisite flower.
Many of the poems have the quality of a still life. Yet the gorgeous descriptions of the natural world are frequently couched in a spiritual lexis. Thus in the poem ‘Daffodils’ the flowers are described as having ‘‘papery halos in tact’’ and are ‘‘attendant, waiting for us somewhere in the wings like angels.’’ However this particular poem is the only one to explicitly reference a Christian God, generally there is an absence of formal religion. Instead MacRae’s narrators seek some kind of pantheistic force that connects all life, resembling in their desire, the ideals of the Romantic poets.
Through out the collection MacRae returns to the theme of unfulfilled fertility both in the natural and human world. ‘Pomegranate’ deals with a plant that flowers ‘‘too far north too late’’. The poet’s skill here is to show the glorious potential of the plant at the beginning of the poem immediately contrasting it in the second half with lexis of death as the fruit fails ‘‘black on black’’ becoming ‘‘ just scuffed purses and a few dry seeds’’. The descriptions become increasingly anthropomorphic: ‘‘twin embryos of glistening flesh’’, ‘‘red cells’’ ‘‘skin tucked tight to the wall’’ suggesting, a menopausal reflection on a loss of fertility. This is further developed by the middle aged narrator in ‘Virgin and Child’ who observes a picture of the Madonna and feels ‘‘years past ovulation’’ the ‘‘vital second the sperm find the egg’’.
There are many tender love poems amongst the collection. They are rendered all the more touching by their narrators’ ‘‘old need to know where love goes once we’re outside time’’ One solution is found in memory, as characters sustain their relationships with the dead by recalling ‘‘ghostly perfume lingering in threadbare curtains and sheets’’ or visiting ‘‘the shore where I speak to my mother, whose voice I’ll never hear but who always listens,’’. Time recurs throughout the work both as a word and a concept. There is an almost Keatsian need to outwit it and acquire some kind of immortality. Here the poems focusing on paintings are utilised. Not only do they comment on the narrative of the image itself but it becomes clear that for MacRae, a painting much like a poem achieves for its author a kind of immortality.
In the poems that deal explicitly with terminal illness, MacRae remains true to herself as an artist. Whilst cancer enters the narrative the work is neither self pitying or lurid. Some of the most touching poems deal with long nights of insomnia, when ‘‘Time's slipped its leash and is running wild in the dark. ’’ The persona courageously using memories of music or the image of a woodpecker in the garden to ‘‘distract me from my fear’’
The natural world forms a poignant comparison to the narrator’s predicament in these last poems. The description of Spring wood- anemones in ‘Blue Material’, contrasts sharply with the matter of fact tone that goes on to inform us ‘‘I’ve made my will and thrown out all the old clothes I don’t wear’’. This unsentimental description of setting her affairs in order suggests that the action itself is part of the natural order of things.
This collection represents the summation of a poet who remarkably only wrote poetry for ten years. The poems reveal MacRae to be a technically accomplished poet able to use rhyme effectively and tackle differing forms including sonnet and villanelle with skill. Her lyricism and subject matter places her in the tradition of the Romantic poets. Works such as ‘The Smile’, ‘Ghazal: In the Dark’ and ‘Yellow Marsh Iris’ deserve to be re-read and remembered.
….Reviewed by Fiona Sinclair