Kathleen McPhilemy reviews At the Edge of Light by Lynne Wycherley Shoestring Press. 2003. 58pp. £7.95. ISBN 1899549897. reviews sof 69 January 2005 Repeatedly, in Wycherley’s poetry we sense a reaching out to a reality which transcends the individual and the moment, but which eschews the conventions of religion. In her poems about figures of the past, especially women of the past, such as The Woman of the Rocks or A Pasaryk Burial, she seems to point to an integrity and continuity of human experience which extends past death. In William Blake and the Dulwich Hill Angel she pursues a cosmic vision which is at once the ultimate goal of physics and the immanent divinity in which Blake believed.
The Motorcycle Diaries (Notes on a LatinAmerican Journey) by Ernesto Guevara,translated by Alexandra Keeble with a preface by Aleida Guevara March and an Introduction by CintioVitier is published by Harper Perennial. sof 69 January 2005 The Motorcycle Diaries Cicely Herbert reviews Walter Salles’ film about Che Guevara’s epic journey on his not-so-trusty steed, the motorcycle La Ponderosa. sof 69 January 2005 Luminous, liminous, numinous As I tried to identify the quality of the poems in Lynne Wycherley’s At The Edge of Light, I found myself searching for a word which would somehow combine the ideas of numinous and luminous. At the same time, I realised that if there were such a word, Wycherley would probably have used it. Her poetry is described as sensual and scrupulously observed and while this is true, it does not go far enough. The scrupulosity of observation is united to a precision of language, which ensures that detail is rendered exactly, resulting in a poetry that is taut and controlled. Wycherley does not so much indulge in sensuality as anatomise it.
From dreaming depths you peered at me, Fawn barbules silking your body In these two lines from Tawny Owl, we can see Wycherley’s technique at work. The ‘dreaming depths’ of the owl’s lair hovers on the edge of subjectivity with the hypnotic use of alliteration and the transferred epithet of ‘dreaming’ which more properly applies to the poet. However, this is countered by the precision of ‘peered’ and the evocative sensuality of ‘silking’. But the truly distinctive word in this line is ‘barbules’; specific and technical, it sends us scurrying to the dictionary and inhibits any easy reading of the poem.
Wycherley does this over and over again. Her poetry resists us by its insistence on using words, which are unfamiliar but specific, often drawn from the technical vocabulary of a particular discipline. The delight in physical detail is reflected in the delight in specific language. Sometimes, we feel she is teasing us. In The Mary Rose Ship Hall she tells us of ‘the drowned notes of a douciane’ and generously footnotes ‘douciane’ as a type of ‘shawm’. However, I found ‘shawm’ equally opaque and needed the dictionary to tell me it was an ‘obsolete musical instrument with a reed’.
The book is divided into four sections, but opens and closes with two poems which complement each other beautifully and emphasise the poet’s concern with the quality of light. Bewick Swans Arrive At Ouse Washes is a poem which successfully coveys the emergence of hope out of threat and struggle without any surrender to facile optimism. In a startling and effective image, she describes the triumph of winter, ‘the darkness sways on its haunches/ like an impatient bear’ and its interruption by the arrival of the swans, who have the whiteness and brightness of light as they ‘crash-land on the water/ star after star after star’. The isolation of the final line forces us to ponder exactly what the swans are bringing us. The stars carry the connotations of the Christmas star which is confirmed by the season in which the poem is set. The colloquial meaning of ‘star’ as someone outstanding also carries weight. At the same time, we know that stars are remote and that their light is hard and intensely bright, and gains its quality from the surrounding darkness. The promise of the poem is not an easy one.
The final poem, Solstice, includes the title of the volume in its last line, ‘to somewhere at the edge of light’. This is a poem of thresholds, another of Wycherley’s preoccupations. It is set between night and day, between seasons, between the seen and the unseen, between the understood and the unknown, as ‘it hovers at the lych-gate’ between this book and the next. Three Days in Fermanagh announces this theme in its first line, ‘We were stopped at the border’, before moving on to the ‘janiform sculptures/on Boa Island.’ This poem skilfully combines topical allusion with a meditation on love, ‘two personalities joined at the hip,/eyes fixed on opposite horizons’ and death:
If there’s an otherworld, send back an apple. Something to capture this beauty and terror: no postcards, please.
I find the density of this poem particularly satisfying.
Immediate experience and personal emotions are supported by classical and literary allusion. The last two lines, in their oblique reference to Yeats’ ‘terrible beauty’ remind us of the political and topical realities with which the poem opened. It is when Wycherley allows us to explore the implications and resonances of her work for ourselves that she is most successful.
Occasionally, she tells us what she means which has a slightly limiting or disappointing effect. Two poems which have this, for me, too worked-out, slightly didactic quality are Bachelor of Science and In the Forge.
The first poem, a sonnet which exhibits the poet’s technical virtuosity, is perhaps constrained by its form. It is also, I feel, rather surprising in its negative view of science in the context of so many other poems, where the poet seems to delight in the knowledge and precision of understanding of the natural world which science affords.
In the second section of the book, the poet shows how her concern with borders originates in her own history. The first poem, another sonnet, places her between ‘hill and fen. /Child of both and neither.
Amphibian.’ The sense of contraries is developed in moving portraits of her parents, both set in the fens, between land and water. In Ely Cathedral, again a celebration of this landscape, she explores the boundaries of earth and water, solid and vapour, physical and spiritual. The poet explores the limen in pursuit of the numen.
It is from this almost unbearable light, ‘god’s lightning’ that these poems derive their sense of lumen, limen and numen.
Kathleen McPhilemy’s most recent poetry collection is The Lion in the Forest (Katabasis,London 2004). luminous, liminous, numinous Summer by the Swale For Ian Today we will walk with the shearlings and ewes, the gimmers and hoggets, on gritstone slopes where weathers brawl and the Swale untwists its brown story, peat-stained water plunging from the rocks, swinging a cold, curved blade.