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Undisturbed Circles<\/em> is Bethany W. Pope\u2019s third full length collection and follows closely on the heels of her chapbook, The Gospel of Flies<\/em> (Writing Knights Press, 2014).\u00a0 It consists of six acrostic sonnet sequences, a form which Pope first unveiled in her second collection, Crown of Thorns<\/em> (Oneiros Books, 2013). In their different ways the sequences gathered here are variations on the \u2018quest\u2019 theme and explore aspects of the poet\u2019s psychic and spiritual growth. Readers of Pope\u2019s previous collections will be familiar with some of the autobiographical details of her journey and the way that she negotiates seemingly intractable subject matter by means of highly complex metrical structures. Since Crown of Thorns<\/em>, Pope has been arranging many of her poems into \u2018crowns\u2019 of acrostic sonnets, in which the first letters of each line and, in this collection, the final letters of each line, spell out messages that comment upon the main narrative. Add to this a regular syllabic count, a pattern of repetitions whereby one sonnet starts with the concluding line of its predecessor and, occasionally, a final sonnet composed of all the first lines of the poems that preceded it, and you will get some idea of the challenges that this poet sets herself. That she manages to make any sense at all might be considered impressive, but that she comes through with poetry that is authentic and memorable is even more so. Moreover, the way that the acrostics embody submerged narrative threads hints at the way that autobiographical details are buried and resurface in the mythologies explored in this collection.<\/p>\n In \u2018Fox Cycle\u2019 the acrostics are given extra prominence by heading up each poem by way of exposition. We learn from the outset that \u2018Vixen knows terrible secrets\u2019 and then follow the lines as they weave through and highlight aspects of the main narrative: \u2018Love of dark set her path \/ fleet-footed as the shadows. Bless \/ the journey. Paths through spider- \/ haunted yews yet return here: home\u2019. As visceral and empathetic as the work of Hughes or Henry Williamson, Pope leads us through an ever-recurring cycle of procreation, birth and death:<\/p>\n The vixen dug into the earth, her home. Pope, of course, does not delude herself that there is no divide between her and the creature she is describing: \u2018And yet, \/ what could I know of her mind?\u2019 The notorious blood lust of a fox in a hen coop is given concise but graphic expression: \u2018Festival \/ night among the chickens.\u2019 Memorable, too, are the repeated lines that link successive sonnets:<\/p>\n Even the youngest of us taste our deaths.\u2019 (2\/3)<\/p>\n Boldly the child wandered through the bone-yard. (3\/4)<\/p>\n They courted among shrike-haunted thorn trees. (5\/6)<\/p>\n With her second and longest sequence,’The Labyrinth’, Pope returns to a more overtly autobiographical mode. However, each acrostic sonnet is further complemented by an expository prose poem and a 5 X 5, a form devised by the poet in which five lines of five syllables have the effect of a slightly compressed tanka. Within this brief compass \u2018real\u2019 characters from world of North Carolina morph into the mythological figures of Persephone, Bear and Vixen, while within the sonnets\u2019 main narrative there is plenty of the \u2018Southern Gothic\u2019 we have come to expect: a heady mix of deprivation, guilt, and fundamentalist religion in which the protagonist, \u2018a strange chthonic child\u2019, discovers books and the gift for poetry that leads to her eventual redemption. The discovery of love, also, has its part to play: \u2018the \/ Soft warmth of skin that loves your hard flesh.\u2019<\/p>\n After the traumatic details of \u2018The Labyrinth\u2019, the poet turns, by way of contrast,\u00a0 to the classical tradition in \u2018The Metamorphosis of Physis\u2019, which traces the artistic development of a friend\u2019. An enigmatic idyll, in which the poet just about gets away with some slightly arch and Parnassian language, this is also a sequence in which she brings in some comic touches in her portrayal of the grumpy Hephaestus. Three further cycles complete the collection. \u2018Three-Legged Crow\u2019 is a short trickster cycle in which the matter of fact tone of the sonnets contrasts with the mythological narrative of the 5 x 5s that accompany them:<\/p>\n Crows have incredible intelligence. When the world ends, Crow In \u2018The Tower\u2019 Pope\u2019s sources are medieval with echoes of Dante and a dog-headed St Christopher taken from the Byzantine tradition. Making use of an archetypal symbol previously explored by Browning and Yeats, Pope\u2019s \u2018dreamlike experiment in gothic drama\u2019 is a powerful blend of the visionary and the realistic:<\/p>\n The plants were phosphorescent. Light from small Finally, \u2018Double Helix\u2019 is a sonnet sequence exploring the evolution of man as a physical and spiritual being, a theme which is reminiscent of some of Auden\u2019s more conventionally structured sonnets. Never deflected by what is merely fashionable Bethany W. Pope is a poet who always goes where her muse takes her.\u00a0 She is a formidable technician who has moments of real power.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nHer belly ached with glassy pain as her
\nexpanding cervix gaped for her daughter.<\/p>\n
\nRarely does it take more than a few hours
\nOf work to find their daily food. If you
\nWatch them out on the lawn, their sense of fun
\nFrequently overwhelms them\u2026<\/p>\n
\nWill switch off the lights
\nAnd shut the last door.
\nCrow will see us all
\nOut into the night.<\/p>\n
\nExcrescent fungi flourished, showing the
\nNearly overgrown staircase that spiralled
\nClear through the centre of a room\u2026<\/p>\n