{"id":1060,"date":"2007-09-11T16:58:38","date_gmt":"2007-09-11T16:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1060"},"modified":"2007-09-11T16:58:38","modified_gmt":"2007-09-11T16:58:38","slug":"the-book-of-blood-%e2%80%93-reviewed-by-dot-cobley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/the-book-of-blood-%e2%80%93-reviewed-by-dot-cobley\/","title":{"rendered":"The Book of Blood \u2013 reviewed by Dot Cobley"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Book of Blood by Vicki Feaver <\/span>
Cape (2006)<\/span>
66pp, \u00a39.00<\/span>
ISBN: 0224076841<\/span>

It has taken twelve years for Vicki Feaver\u2019s third collection, The Book of Blood, to appear. The \u2018Blood\u2019 of the title includes the blood of murder, sacrifice, menstruation, ancestry, and of wild creatures shot for food. As in her previous book, The Handless Maiden, she draws on classical mythology and fairytales, paintings, female sexuality, sex and death, but there are new themes here too: love poems, and others dealing with mental illness. This is a wise, wide-ranging, excitingly uneven book, with occasional disappointments, such as \u2018Borrowed Dog\u2019 and \u2018Spider\u2019. <\/span>

Women who turn to murder are a recurring theme in both collections. In The Handless Maiden Judith, grieving for her murdered husband, \u2018rolled in the ash of the fire\/ just to be touched and dirtied\/ by something\u2019 (\u2018Judith\u2019). This idea is picked up in \u2018Cinderella\u2019. Feaver\u2019s Cinderella rolls in the ashes then:<\/span>

I print the shapes of grief<\/span>

hands<\/span>
feet<\/span>
breasts<\/span>
belly<\/span>
open mouth<\/span>

onto fine linen sheets.<\/span>
 <\/span>
This impassioned defiance finds a chillier echo in \u2018Blodeuwedd\u2019, a poem based on an ancient Welsh tale, blodeuwedd being the Welsh word for owl (literally, \u2018flower face\u2019). The narrator, a woman fashioned out of flowers, tells how she conspired with her lover to murder her husband, then was turned into an owl as punishment:<\/span>

Sometimes, I lunge at your lighted<\/span>
windows: printing the glass<\/span>
with breast, talons,<\/span>
outstretched wings,<\/span>
flower face of a desperate girl.<\/span>

\u2018Blodeuwedd\u2019 is only one of many poems where people turn into birds or animals, and vice versa. \u2018Bufo Bufo\u2019, where the fable of the frog prince is turned on its head, starts as a seemingly straightforward description of a toad in the narrator\u2019s cellar, then we are told that it\u2019s spring, the toad\u2019s mating season: \u2018But he\u2019s my prisoner \u2013 soft, warty stone\/\/ who at night swells\/ to the size of a man.\u2019  <\/span>

\u2018Glow-Worm\u2019 is the first of a dozen love poems at the heart of the book (in both senses). This is a deftly controlled piece, full of assonance and half-rhymes \u2013 shine\/immune, lawn\/palm, butt\/cigarette \u2013 with rhythms that start to run forward, then are pulled gently back. The charged restraint of the writing, the hints of budding intimacy, and the symbolism of the title all combine to make this probably the sexiest poem in the book. This is Feaver at her best: well worth the wait.<\/span>


\u2022 Reviewed by Dot Cobley. In a fortchcoming anthology Dot Cobley says of herself \u201cI\u2019ve got six different jobs, I attend four assorted poetry groups, and do most of my writing between 5:00 and 6:30am.\u201d<\/span>

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Book of Blood by Vicki Feaver Cape (2006)66pp, \u00a39.00ISBN: 0224076841It has taken twelve years for Vicki Feaver\u2019s third collection, The Book of Blood, to appear. The \u2018Blood\u2019 of the title includes the blood of murder, sacrifice, menstruation, ancestry, and of wild creatures shot for food. As in her previous book, The Handless Maiden, she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}