{"id":5456,"date":"2013-10-06T09:00:19","date_gmt":"2013-10-06T09:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=5456"},"modified":"2020-12-09T14:35:48","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T14:35:48","slug":"julia-webb-reviews-the-son-of-a-shoemaker-by-linda-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/julia-webb-reviews-the-son-of-a-shoemaker-by-linda-black\/","title":{"rendered":"Julia Webb reviews ‘The Son of a Shoemaker’ by Linda Black"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Linda Black, who has already planted her feet firmly in the prose poem and experimental writing camp having previously delivered two books of prose poems (published by Shearsman) delivers a pamphlet designed to push the boundaries of both narrative and poetry. The Son of a Shoemaker<\/em> is a collection of prose poems (or found prose poems) collaged from the 1940\u2019s book of the same name by Constance Buel Burnett. Burnett\u2019s book is a semi-fictional biography of the early life of Hans Christian Anderson \u2013 the book was aimed at school children.<\/p>\n

You might expect that Black\u2019s poems would follow some kind of narrative along similar lines to the original book but it doesn\u2019t seem to. Without having a copy of the original text it is impossible to tell whether Black has jumped around within the text or taken phrases in the order they crop up in the book, but this doesn\u2019t really matter. What matters is whether these poems stand up as poems and as a collection of poems, and I believe that they do. Black has chosen to focus on the relationships between Anderson and those around him as well as Anderson\u2019s relationship with fairy tale and the written word.\u00a0 There are also echoes of Black\u2019s own relationship with poetry within the text. This is an intriguing collection. Fantastical and domestic scenes jostle against each other in the same poems, and often in the same lines. The world that Black\u2019s Anderson inhabits is a dark and confusing place inhabited by scary school mistresses and other odd characters. It is not a comfortable place to be – he seems at odds with the world around him, the people that populate it, his own body, and even his own sense of self and reality.<\/p>\n

Black has an eye for a good phrase and the titles of the poems are great and at first glance might lead one to expect more of a linear or conventional narrative \u2013 e.g. He had led many lunatics to the Chief Director\u2019s Office.<\/em> Thank fully this is not usually the case and while the poems do allude in some way to their titles they do not always make sense in a conventional way. There are one or two exceptions \u2013 Before he could feel frightened<\/em> for instance is much more straightforward than many of the other poems and follows a slightly more conventional narrative style. These poem are peopled with beautiful phrases and interesting syntax.<\/p>\n

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Phantasmagoria picked him a nosegay. Rang easily and<\/p>\n

often his heart coiled against her braids: plunged him into<\/p>\n

that world less and less actual.<\/p>\n

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(The Cord of ecstasy is a fragile one<\/em>)<\/p>\n

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They often evoke a feeling, a sense of time and place rather than telling a story or spelling something out to the reader. \u00a0Even at their most elusive there is something ethereal and beautiful about them. The phrases sing in a marvellous language of their own:<\/p>\n

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Great raw bone hands cut with magic. \u00a0Fragile lace.<\/p>\n

Paper-thin thighs. Mannersisms misfit and dilapidated.<\/p>\n

gestures slipped and fell.<\/p>\n

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(His head swam from other causes than mere suffocation<\/em>)<\/p>\n

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I did, however, find myself wondering if the idea behind the poems merited a whole pamphlet. Personally I would have been happy to see the strongest poems as a sequence in a larger collection. As a pamphlet I found them hard going and had to keep leaving them alone for a while and coming back to them.\u00a0 The text is broken up by Black\u2019s pen and ink drawings – the drawings have a light fairy tale quality which while it suits the mood\u00a0 of\u00a0 the subject matter, for me didn\u2019t quite live up to the cleverly playful but highly constructed nature of the poems \u2013 even though Black is clearly an accomplished artist. This was an interesting read \u2013 I shall be seeking out more of Black\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

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Buy your copy of The Son of a Shoemaker<\/em> by Linda Black (Hearing Eye) here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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                    Linda Black, who has already planted her feet firmly in the prose poem and experimental writing camp having previously delivered two books of prose poems (published by Shearsman) delivers a pamphlet designed to push the boundaries of both narrative and poetry. The Son of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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-5456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5456","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5456"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22141,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5456\/revisions\/22141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}