{"id":211,"date":"2011-04-03T10:35:15","date_gmt":"2011-04-03T10:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=211"},"modified":"2011-04-03T10:35:15","modified_gmt":"2011-04-03T10:35:15","slug":"julia-webb-reviews-michelle-mcgranes-the-suitable-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/julia-webb-reviews-michelle-mcgranes-the-suitable-girl\/","title":{"rendered":"Julia Webb reviews Michelle McGrane's 'The Suitable Girl.'"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Suitable Gir<\/span>l by Michelle McGrane, Pindrop Press 2010<\/span>

The Suitable Girl<\/span><\/a>, Michelle Mcgrane\u2019s third collection, is brimming with sumptuous concrete detail and mythology. Running just below the surface of the poems is an undercurrent of threat and violence. This may reflect her background \u2013 McGrane was born in Zimbabwe and has lived in South Africa since the age of fourteen.  There is an odd sense of displacement in these poems which may also mirror the author\u2019s experience of moving from one country to another \u2013 but with this comes a kind of fearlessness \u2013 McGrane is not afraid to jump from one location to another, or even one historical era to another. She evokes themes that, although sometimes site-specific, speak to the humanity in all of us. There are poems here set throughout the world and throughout history and written in a variety of forms \u2013 although mostly variations of free verse. There is also a series of prose poems that are interspersed throughout the collection and I found myself wondering if these would have been stronger had they been grouped together.  <\/span>

McGrane has an artist\u2019s fascination for food and the subject crops up again and again, sometimes directly in poems like <\/span>Thirteen Ways With Figs, Frangipani Night, Augusta Faberg\u00e9<\/span> and <\/span>Bertha Mason Speaks<\/span> but it also comes into play in her descriptions – for example \u201cguilloch\u00e9d, strawberry red carapace\u201d (Augusta Faberg\u00e9) or \u201cThe grape-sized sores on her legs\u201d (4 a.m.).  Food is also notable for its absence in poems like <\/span>Skin Offerings<\/span>. Even in her poem about science (<\/span>The Discovery Shed<\/span>) food rears its head; \u201cfor lunch a baguette, a wedge of Gruy\u00e9re\u201d. And the food in McGrane\u2019s poems is not ordinary food; it is imbued with richness, exoticism and mysticism. The beautifully seductive <\/span>Thirteen Ways with Figs<\/span> will leave you salivating and heading for the kitchen.  In this poem McGrane has elevated food to new heights giving it almost mythical qualities \u2013 and the poem is somehow oddly reminiscent of Charles Simic or the <\/span>Games<\/span> sequence by Vasko Popa: <\/span>

Bind three, white Cilento figs<\/span>
with a crimson ribbon for dreams of love.<\/span>
Place the fruit under your pillow.<\/span>
In the morning, loop the ribbon around your waist<\/span>.<\/span>

Other influences are evident here too \u2013 McGrane\u2019s <\/span>Lunar Postcards<\/span> sequence put me in mind of Alice Oswald\u2019s space poems in <\/span>Woods Etc<\/span> and her love of mythology and fairytale (and even her historical poems have been given a fairytale treatment \u2013 think Foucault or Angela Carter rather than Hans Christian Anderson) echoes that of other modern female poets writing in the mythological tradition \u2013 Pascale Petit, Helen Ivory, Vicki Feaver or perhaps even Carol Ann Duffy in her World\u2019s Wife era.  This is in no way a criticism; it is inevitable when reading poetry that the reader will make comparisons with other writers: one cannot see a bee poem, for instance, without thinking of Plath\u2019s <\/span>The Bee Meeting<\/span>. <\/span>

McGrane has a finely tuned ear and is able to make her descriptions come alive, achieving a kind of beautiful realism through a mixture of concrete detail and abstract imagery. And the poems are carried along by her songlike rhythms and use of both internal and external alliteration: <\/span>

Outside, on the ivy-clad veranda<\/span>
a sphinx moth sizzles in the flickering flame.<\/span>
Fruit bats swoop and glide<\/span>
Between the bozy baobab\u2019s branches.<\/span>

(from <\/span>Frangipani Night<\/span>)<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

.…..Reviewed by Julia Webb<\/a><\/span><\/font>
<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n


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

The Suitable Girl by Michelle McGrane, Pindrop Press 2010The Suitable Girl, Michelle Mcgrane\u2019s third collection, is brimming with sumptuous concrete detail and mythology. Running just below the surface of the poems is an undercurrent of threat and violence. This may reflect her background \u2013 McGrane was born in Zimbabwe and has lived in South Africa […]<\/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-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","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=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}