{"id":108,"date":"2012-03-21T19:31:58","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T19:31:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=108"},"modified":"2020-12-09T14:36:58","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T14:36:58","slug":"david-cooke-reviews-esther-morgans-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/david-cooke-reviews-esther-morgans-grace\/","title":{"rendered":"David Cooke reviews Esther Morgan’s ‘Grace’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Esther Morgan: Grace. Bloodaxe Books. \u00a02011. ISBN: 9781852249182.\u00a0 \u00a38.95.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Esther Morgan\u2019s enigmatically entitled third collection, Grace, was a Poetry Book Society recommendation and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.\u00a0 It also contains her Bridport winning poem \u2018This Morning\u2019.\u00a0 It is always gratifying when a fine collection receives its due. However, it is all the more so in these days of the \u2018creative writing\u2019 boom when, poetically speaking, it is frequently difficult to see the wood for the trees, that such an unassuming and quietly impressive collection should be so widely recognized. On the simplest of levels \u2018grace\u2019 is an appropriate term to evoke the astringent elegance and seeming simplicity of these poems. However, if I remember correctly the Roman Catholic Catechism which I had to learn in my schooldays, \u2018grace\u2019 is an unearned gift freely bestowed by God. It is also a conventional prayer of thanksgiving that is offered up for what one is about to eat.
\nIn Morgan\u2019s title poem, which is also the collection\u2019s opening poem, the religious connotations\u2028of the word are allied to a zenlike state of receptivity:<\/p>\n

It looks \u2028simple: the glass vase holding
\nwhatever is \u2028offered \u2013
\ncut flowers,\u2028or the thought of them \u2013<\/p>\n

simple, though\u2028 not easy
\nthis waiting\u2028 without hunger in the near dark
\nfor what you\u2028 may be about to receive.<\/p>\n

A similar sense of anticipation is evoked in \u2018Epiphany\u2019:<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been\u2028 doing this ever since I was a girl
\nstepping into a moment<\/p>\n

like an empty \u2028platform
\nor a summer garden<\/p>\n

just before \u2028the dew has lifted \u2013
\nas if I could dare you to appear.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In this poem, the title of which brings to mind the figure of James Joyce, there is also a nod towards the hushed atmosphere of the opening section of Eliot\u2019s \u2018Burnt Norton\u2019. However, Morgan\u2019s way with language is quite her own as shown by the marvellous image which brings this poem to its close: \u2018They say not being given \/ what we pray for \/ is also an answer: the blue sky at dawn \/ with its wafer of moon, \/ the embankment buddleia \/ burning with admirals.\u2019<\/p>\n

In \u2018Waiting Places\u2019 she again hints at the possibility of the miraculous entering our workaday lives with another startling image: \u2018What if one hazy afternoon, \/ Greensleeves<\/em> drifting from across the park, \/ this Rorshach of spilt paint on the pavement \/ opened its wings?\u2019 In other poems a sense of the miraculous is mediated via the iconography of the\u2028 Annunciation as in \u2018Among Women\u2019 where, ironically, a busy housewife has actually just missed the apparition: \u2018I sensed the house had been visited \u2013 \/ wings unfurling like ferns in the quiet air\u2019, her sense of loss encapsulated again in the poem\u2019s brilliant final image of \u2018sunlight in the guest room climbing its ladder of dust.\u2019 In other poems such as \u2018News\u2019 and \u2018Blessed Art Thou\u2019 the Gospel story is turned on its head and events are seen from the perspective of the visiting angel. In the former, the visitant struggles to make his\u2028appearance and finds himself in competition with a radio \u2018blaring the news\u2019 in the kitchen, while in \u2018Blessed Art Thou\u2019 it is the angel who steps back in awe at what for us might seem quite ordinary:
\nFirst I watched you kneading the dough,
\nhow you put\u2028 your whole body into it,
\nthe surprising \u2028strength of your slim fingers.
\nHere it is not only the basic trope which is breathtaking, but Morgan\u2019s scrupulously observed images manage to combine the sacramental and the quotidian in a way that is utterly convincing: \u2018you chose that moment, at last, to rest, \/ your skin filmed and shining, \/ your warmth rising against me like bread.\u2019 \u00a0\u00a0Elsewhere the idea of an absence is used to imagine some kind of afterlife as here in \u2018Last summer\u2019: \u2018I want to come back as sunlight \/ to steal over everything I own \/\/ with the warmth of skin \/ that isn\u2019t there.\u2019
\nThe composure \u2028of many of Morgan\u2019s poems is deeply satisfying.\u00a0 However, that is by no means the whole story. \u2018Shifting\u2019 is an almost mathematically precise description of a woman whose dissatisfaction with her life makes her constantly re-arrange her furniture. The futility of her actions is summed up with a Pascalian \u00a0cogency: \u2018What doesn\u2019t change is the room, or the furniture, \/ only the permutation she has to work with.\u2019 In \u2018Enola Gay\u2019 she presents us with another housewife busy at her tasks, which may seem at first to be more of the same, until we realise that the woman described is the mother of the pilot who dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan. In her award-wining poem \u2018This\u2028Morning\u2019 her ability to describe a simple domestic scene is informed by an appreciation of the tragic aspects of life:
\nI watched the\u2028sun moving round the kitchen,
\nan early\u2028spring sun that strengthened and weakened,
\ncoming and\u2028going like an old mind.<\/p>\n

In Muntjac the poem\u2019s protagonist tries to bring some comfort to a deer struck by a car, but concedes the pointlessness of her gesture: \u2018Why didn\u2019t you just leave her ..? \/\/ How heavy it is \u2013 this brokenness \/ which couldn\u2019t be helped.\u2019 The underlying tragedy of life is again powerfully expressed in \u2018To My Godmother\u2019: I did not know then \/ how grief works, \/ how it steeps the clear world \/ like dye from a red dress \/ that keeps on running.\u2019 Finally, although many of Morgan\u2019s poems describe brief, deeply felt lyrical moments, she can also write well at greater length.\u00a0 There is the wonderful poem \u2018Shifting\u2019, which has already been noted, in which a woman seems almost caged in by a domestic interior as if she were a character from a Beckett novel. In \u2018The Wayfarer\u2019, which consists of four seven-lined stanzas, the idea of \u2018home\u2019 is viewed from a completely different perspective. Here the protagonist is an outsider, an updated version of the Anglo-Saxon \u2018wanderer\u2019, who has found a community where he feels he can finally become a \u2018part of the furniture.\u2019<\/p>\n

Esther Morgan\u2019s beautifully poised and elliptical poems are a celebration of the essential mystery of human existence. Creating a world which is shot through with brilliant, shimmering images in which a bread knife catches the light \u2018like a meaning\u2019 or where we see \u2018galaxies of light blazing \/ in the mirror\u2019s bevelled edge\u2019, her work is also\u2028an induction into the mystery of poetic creation. This is a collection I have found myself returning to again and again. It is poignant, profound, and exquisitely\u2028crafted. It is a collection to read, buy and keep.
\n….reviewed by David Cooke<\/p>\n

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

Esther Morgan: Grace. Bloodaxe Books. \u00a02011. ISBN: 9781852249182.\u00a0 \u00a38.95. Esther Morgan\u2019s enigmatically entitled third collection, Grace, was a Poetry Book Society recommendation and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.\u00a0 It also contains her Bridport winning poem \u2018This Morning\u2019.\u00a0 It is always gratifying when a fine collection receives its due. However, it is all the […]<\/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-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","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=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}