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The first part of this major collection of poems in English by Gwyneth Lewis is ‘Parables and Faxes’. Dating from 1995, it contains 3 minor sequences together with individual poems, followed by the long title sequence which is full of mystery and originality.
First of the three, ‘Illinois Idylls’, draws on snapshots of a visit to American cousins. It is playful, affectionate and richly evocative of the landscape but it also contains clues to preoccupations pursued elsewhere. ‘No. 5’ is an experience of the daily miracle of existence and in ‘No. 12’ she writes: 'We are words in the mouth/ of daylight, we are undone by the dark.' ‘Six Poems on Nothing’ is a delicate appreciation of simplification: 'thirst for the lovely commonplace'. ‘Welsh Espionage’, in contrast, shows a wicked, unsettling sense of humour and springs from the tensions of bilingualism and temporary exile from Wales which make home-coming feel like spying. Among these sharp and funny pieces is a plangent villanelle whose lines - 'Leave if you like, but those you left won't wait./ Now pay the price of coming home too late.'- resonate with a whole generation.
The individual poems are witty and fantastical. Playfulness and fantasy are still present in the final sequence, but here the poet really wrestles with her angel. The epilogue (25) uses a North Walian saint story to distil the dialogue between Parable and Fax. Both try to express experience, neither can succeed totally, but resolve to 'do what they could with provisional praise and partial vision'.
The first poem of the sequence begins with the 'fact' of a family photo including a beehive, but expands to contain both the truth that flings 'all sense into terror' and the 'grace /which keeps knowing so near us, but the lid in place.' It is both the wonder and control of this knowing which the poet expresses so well throughout this collection. Her skill and flexibility with form is matched by her wit and startling, original vision.
‘Zero Gravity’ (1998) sets off 3 trails, following shuttle, comet and dying sister, which weave together. The most straightforward is her account of seeing her American cousin prepare, travel in the shuttle and return. These poems wear their form lightly. They are almost chatty beside the taught, gnomic double-meanings of the comet group. She uses imagery from both strands in the deceptively simple laments for her dying sister-in-law, so that her death is seen as a journey into space and beyond time and the cousin's actual journey becomes a death and resurrection.
Section 2 opens with a richly sensual and exotic group: ‘Coconut Postcards’, followed by the bizarre, comic vision of ‘The Love of Furniture’ and by individual poems including two concerning relationships with pets. These demonstrate the common bond of this section - different states of love.
In the third section, ‘The Soul Candle’, love is burning. ‘Flyover Elegies’ is haunted by a suicide, but the sardonic humour is back in such poems as 'Talk with a Headache'.
Section 4, ‘The Air's Graffiti’, is grounded in the landscape, full of fine observation, mystery and mischief. It concludes with ‘The Mind Museum’ sequence which has been set to music. This gives glimpses of modern information management but with telling reservations: 'We dream in video what they lived by day'. . .'Remember the real matters more than the known'.
The first two parts of ‘Keeping Mum’ (2003) derive from the poet's welsh 'detective story' ’Y Llofrudd laith’ (1999) concerning the 'death' of the Welsh language, although only a few are actual translations from the story. She revisits the grief, guilt and discomfort of ‘Welsh Espionage’ in ‘The Language Murderer’, but binds it with more family history. Here the loss of language is more generally seen as a blunting of senses or even full aphasia where 'Someone's cut the string /between each word and its matching thing'.
The second part is a meditation on mental illness and language which contains many insights into the role of the psychiatrist: translating 'pain into tales they can tolerate'; using 'silence as a khaki hide', and on the separate hells of the 'cases'. This culminates in the wonderful piece ‘What They Don't Teach You at Medical School’ which uses the image of Dante's Virgil for the doctor who 'pagan . . . outside the walls/of their paradise…must bow your head/when you hear your Dante torn to shreds/by gods not your own.' Despite the pain of the subject these poems show not only Lewis's easy mastery of form and tone, but also her wit as in ‘Therapy’ and ‘Teenage Craze’.
‘Chaotic Angels’, the final section which gives its title to the whole book, was written, in conjunction with Dragan Andjelic's paintings, for the series of Angel Concerts in London's Wren churches in 2002. 'Fire Angel (3)' combines these elements most clearly but the sonnets focus on angels as messengers between 'different realms of awareness'. In 'Angel of Healing (10)’ are the lines which seem to sum up much of this entire book:
‘What ever the form/imposed by arthritis, or by gout,/ Your job is to compose yourself round about/its formal restrictions, and make that sing, even to death.’
With humour and grace, Gwyneth Lewis triumphantly wrestles with both demons and angels and shows how (even in English) she can sing in chains.
Caroline Clark
It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgement should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.
Gellir defnyddio’r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.
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