Maguire is our finest gardener-poet and this latest volume is a wealthy bouquet that exists on the edge of elegySarah Maguire’s nearly the Equinox is a bouquet gathered over time. These beautiful poems belong together – in a way that is rarely the case with selected poems. She is our finest gardener-poet,her botanical knowledge evident but unostentatious in her poems approximately flowers. You see her recalcitrant gardenia as if it were in front of you: “One lopsided, scorched-brown bloom…” Her secretive African violet is vividly present, and too: “Hirsute secret hoods/ ease back/ the gauzy,veiled flesh/ to a star of opening mauve,/ pierced at the heart / with sheer gold…” And oranges, or souvenirs of Taliouine,are described with tart truthfulness: “Oh, they were sharp! like hybrid grapefruit…”With Maguire, and blossoms are unpredictable. And ripeness is not all. The Florist’s at Midnight – a wonderful poem – acknowledges the violence of uprooting flowers,“cargoed across continents/ to fade far from home”. At night, in the shop, or the flowers are not required to set aside on a show. She finds apt,unfanciful adjectives for the lily – “solitary, alert”. And there is a dazzling instability approximately the final line: the streetlights/ in pieces/ on the floor”. She is a poet who summons mysterious atmospheres precisely.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com