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The poetry of Neil Elder has a compelling domestic surface. By surface I don\u2019t mean superficial. By domestic I don\u2019t mean limited. What he makes of family incidents, whether joyfully tender or horribly upsetting is very distinctive. It\u2019s very difficult to write about being a father in a family, caught at home, on holiday or observing your children. Such subject matter can threaten sentimentality. But Elder is too shrewd and witty a poet to invite that criticism. Just take an apparently simple and direct poem like \u201cArt Appreciation.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Somebody\u2019s rule of inversion;<\/p>\n
appreciation is proportional<\/p>\n
to what is left.<\/p>\n
Crookedly the vase leans in all its orange splendour.<\/p>\n
I see you shake your head in disbelief<\/p>\n
repeating Fabulous<\/em> with wonder.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The epiphany lies in the repeat of the word Fabulous. <\/em>It begins with the term as<\/p>\n a mother\u2019s \u201camazement that sticks in the mind.\u201d Her reaction to the vase is observed<\/p>\n as a \u201cdisproportionate delight\u201d that \u201cmight be the start of a decline.\u201d Elder makes you hear the mother\u2019s voice. It\u2019s distinct, clear, tense with possible judgement, and then<\/p>\n loving approval. Fabulous was a very 1960\/70\u2019s word. Its usage evokes a parent of that generation and her values.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are many examples of a quiet tenderness in The Space Between Us.<\/em> A further mother poem, \u201cWhat we Could Not Give\u201d has the poignant lines,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t possible to find a wall<\/p>\n Large enough to mount a mirror that could<\/p>\n Reflect the love that you have shown.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Elder\u2019s insights and remembrances are often shot through with a very funny observation of things. There\u2019s a skillful balance between the absurd and the deadly serious that draws you comfortably into his world and then shocks. \u201cNot One of Us\u201d is ostensibly a poem about how a gorilla is lovingly accepted into the family domain until they discover it has a flaw.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Then one day I opened the front door<\/p>\n To find ten billion tiny flies<\/p>\n had hatched from underneath Loretta\u2019s ear;<\/p>\n Fur rippling and the air a shivering cloud of nightmare.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And for this diseased ear, the gorilla is destroyed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2026we struck a match and cursed<\/p>\n her back where she belonged.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A family\u2019s abandonment of a wild beast makes for a bigger statement about intolerance, normality and evolution<\/p>\n <\/p>\n we\u2019d think of Attenborough and smile<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Occasionally the compassion of Neil Elder can prove to be a shortcoming. He can admirably engage us in the human scene, with all its frailties, yet technically his language sometimes fails him. Elder strives to say something profound but fails to arrive at a philosophical conclusion. It wasn\u2019t because I wanted some rhetorical summing up but a deeper searching. Poems like \u201cYour Poem\u201d and \u201cHopeful\u201d are slight truisms. However there is so much honest, direct, and thoughtfulness in The Space Between Us<\/em> which indicates that Elder will get better in the books to come.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Back to the collection I hold in my hands. I have nothing but praise for \u201cNot One Of Us\u201d and such companion dark poems as \u201cTestimony\u201d, the sharply written \u201cHorse Drawn\u201d and the semi-grotesque \u201cBeing Dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cBeing Dinner\u201d reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s obsession with the eating of food<\/p>\n (Especially his late great film Frenzy<\/em>). And the collection also has a poem about the shower scene in Psycho<\/em> coupled with Scorcese\u2019s Raging Bull.<\/em> Yet \u201cBeing Dinner\u201d is for me the more effective Hitchcockian \/ Elder experience. It opens surprisingly, and madly, from the food\u2019s point of view!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Flat on the kitchen counter;<\/p>\n to your left, each night,<\/p>\n a figure in chef\u2019s whites sharpening a knife.<\/p>\n You suspected this ending.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I loved these gleefully black comic lines.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Perhaps the poem in the collection that moved me most was the very direct, \u201cWhat We Could Not Give You.\u201d Yet The Space Between Us<\/em> has love, other than mother-love, to give us. These are caring, insightful and generous poems. And any reader of this book will return to its power.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n