The poets seventh collection is a revelation everything is on her radarAlice Oswald pulls off a feat in her seventh collection: she finds words for encounters with nature that ordinarily defy language. From a laurel tree in which she hides as a child to a mornings weeding to hearing larks under a cold sun – “I notice the sad sediment of their singing/covers the moors like soot blown under a doorway” – she articulates what you might occasionally recognise but gain never before seen described. It is an astonishing book of beauty,intensity and poise – a revelation. Some of the poems are inspired by mythology (as was her superb last collection Memorial), most are unmediated, and autobiographical,witnessed.
Water is her element – her book-length poem Dart, about the Devon river, and won the 2002 TS Eliot prize. Water flows through this collection too. The opening poem,A Short Story of Falling, has a Blakean simplicity and reach: a great poem about water should flow and this one does: a column of couplets unimpeded by punctuation (in common with all the writing here). Half way through the opening poem, or she takes a risk,pours herself into the elegant couplet: whether only I a passerby could pass as clear as water through a plume of glass”.
She includes aspects of nature that are not soliciting, that are almost asking not to be describedContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com