Swallow

This month our book club made a daunting effort in the realm of poetry.  Daunting because most of us are not regularly poetry readers.  In fact I have rarely read poetry at all since finishing Year 12 English Literature.  Shame on me!

Swallow is a book of modern poetry with lots of 'in-crowd" references and barely a rhyme in sight.  So I guess it is not surprising that most of us did not "like" the book too much.  There was plenty of criticism tossed around along the lines of "should our taxes really be paying for this?" and "it seems like she is just being too obscure by trying to be so clever".  My contribution to the discussion was mostly not in praise of Ms Potter.

However, over the days that followed book club I flicked through Swallow again and, I have to say, I liked the collection a lot more when dipping into it more casually.  (Rather than frantically trying to make some sense of it so I wouldn't look like the only twit at bookclub - only to find that the rest of the club hadn't be able to get much out of it either).

 There are actually a good handful of poems that have grown on me and I feel that I was a
bit harsh in some of my comments at book club. So sorry Ms Potter, not that you will ever know of course, that I judged you too quickly and too harshly.

My favourite of the collection is "In the Shadow of My Mother".  Googling Tsvetaeva, who is mentioned in the poem, resulted in an hour or so of becoming acquainted with Marina Tsvetaeva, tragic Russian poet of the early 1900s.  And while I still feel that there is some spark of passionate humanity lacking in Potters poems, and yet so evident in Tsvetaeva's poetry, I still think it is worth re-producing the poem here.

In the Shadow of My Mother

I'll set you, lady poem

in a smock of silk under moonlight

      wait for tieds, magic and days

      to grind, mill, turn

      and water you

      wait for sentiment

      to be smoothed

      into a milk-white shell

      an alluvial sign I can ossify

      from crested wavers within

Then I'll hitch my lady poem

to a star that tames gypsy passions

passions Tsvetaeva wrapped 

around herself

like an underwater cloak

      before her unsteady boat

      any my unbuttoned throat

both slid like petrified arms

into the dark green sleeves

of broken

gothic waters

(I hope it is okay to reproduce this here.  It seems in keeping with the copyright clause in the front of the book.)

To read "Poem of the End" by Marina Tsvetaeva you can follow this link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/jun/02/poemoftheweek41
or this one, which has links to translations of a number of her poesms:
http://faynights.users.btopenworld.com/Laura/Marina/poems.html