Philip Knight reviews Science, Consciousness and Ultimate Reality edited by David Lorimer Imprint Academic (Exeter). 2004. 250 pages. Pbk. ISBN: 090784579 7 reviews Just as the Greek myths still stand behind much modern literature, so does Christianity. It is always fascinating to see how contemporary poets handle this inheritance. Richard Skinner and Christine Webb offer quite different approaches.
For those who conceive God, if at all, as an absence, R.S.
Thomas is a ready choice among modern poets. In The Logic of Whistling Skinner offers overt homage to Thomas in a 20page sequence called Probes. For R.S. Thomas there remained ‘only the God-space into which I send out my probes.’ Skinner admits to having probed this space on several occasions. He uses the metaphor of space-probes:
Transmissions… dispatched ten years ago, mystically consist of sporadic static punctuated by fragments of apparent lucidity.
It is the periods of silence, however, which make the most sense.
R.S. Thomas would have admired this sequence.
Skinner’s metaphors are unusual, often challenging: what about God as an obliterating blizzard into which one stumbles like Captain Oates? Some of the poems are humorous and daring:
It was not the Word we had been expecting.
Love had been the front runner closely followed by hope, peace, mercy and grace.
Faith had been popular, as had justice. Reward also had its supporters.
Then God created laughter and all bets were off.
This collection ranges across many topics, one being art.
Adelightful sequence of tiny poems deals with Michelangelo’s image of God’s finger almost connecting with Adam’s. ‘The untouch seethes between them’, says one poem.
Less than the width of a proton or greater than that of the universe?
From finger-tip to finger-tip the distance between God and Adam is both.
An exhibition of Russian icons, however, leaves Skinner cold.
These icons are not my icons.
During the time I spend with them Beech trees are left unhugged Beethoven’s Late Quartets unplayed, The coastal path unwalked, My cat unstroked.
I heartily commend this book.
In After Babel Christine Webb includes two poems which use biblical mythology, and a sequence of five based on gospel narratives. In two cases she provides a provocatively feminist surprise. Eve in Eden manages to make writing materials, but dominant Adam insists ‘Women don’t write… and screwed up her bible.’ Webb begins the gospel sequence with a meditation on the experience of being brought up with the Bible; only on mature reflection did she notice something missing: ‘It was not for a long time that I noticed the absence of women.’ One of the poems in this sequence sets the story of the prodigal son on a modern farm with computer technology; only at the end do we discover that the two brothers also have a sister, who at last leaves the farm, disgusted with male condescension and male stupidity.
Other poems in which the speaker is a woman feature Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, Martha, and Mary Magdalene.
In her title poem, After Babel, Webb takes an imaginative approach to the Babel story. She describes how ‘the day after work stopped on the building’ the old language was lost; no one knew what to call anything. Wise grandmother called them all together, gave them a slip of paper each and sent them off in different directions. Each group invented words for what they encountered. ‘At times we met the others, traded words.’ Much later, they remembered the slips of paper.
We smoothed them out and found a single word in our old language.
It was the same on every one (and try as we might we never recalled another). ‘Together’, it said. ‘Together’, ‘Together’.
Most of this collection has no religious reference, yet the language crops up, as it will, when the poet is deeply moved in a love poem: ‘I began to study the book of your face… Holy Book. Daily bread.’ Perhaps what we look to poets for is this sense of the holy in the here and now. They have always provided it – Wordsworth, Shelley, Eliot and so many more. More than ever, perhaps, we need the service of poets today, poets whose words can provide the depth and significance once found in religion. sof 72 July 2005 Anne Ashworth reviews The Logic of Whistling by Richard Skinner Cairns Publications. 2002. £8. ISBN: 1870652371 After Babel by Christine Webb Peterloo Poets 2004. £7.95. 1904324037 Why we need poets reviews sof 72 July 2005 22 The poet Edwin Brock wrote: ‘There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.’ If one learned little else from Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven one certainly witnessed a great deal of cumbersome killing.