If Paula Rego’s art is, first and foremost, about the body, Rego Retold, containing Owen Lowery’s poetic responses to this idea, are themselves separate nods to portraiture. Romance, though somewhat of a distilled notion for Rego, whose subjects are often portrayed as brawny, animalistic, or openly distressed, is utilised by Lowery to draw out the underlying tender aspects inherent to the paintings:
Nothing, hardly a murmur
between her fingers as they wrap
themselves round him and as they trap
as much of him as they can.
Here, in ‘Pietà’, though the act of cradling loses some of the terror or repulsion which haunts Rego’s visual, the intimacy of the two figures involved is not fully embraced. As the ‘fingers’ of the first subject ‘wrap’ ‘round’ the second, the silence that is momentarily let into the poem becomes immediately oppressive, as the gentle sentimentality of ‘wrap’ leads in sequence to the following rhymed verb-ending ‘trap’, hinting at rules of dominance, duty and subjective compliance.
The critical pronoun ‘themselves’, furthermore, suggests a lack of self-control, and a loss of full bodily administration which, compliantly, is key to many Rego works, as the ‘fingers’ appear to move almost automatically, highlighting and commenting on Rego’s traumatising lack of fullness in the body. What Lowery does with this physical distortion, however, is interesting, as not only do his poems denote the prospect of transformation, but they also fulfil it, often allowing their subjects to find intimacy, and accomplish the notions of sentimentality Rego’s paintings seem to crave, but fear.
Rego’s bodies, often captured in scenes where there the exact emotional circumstance is difficult to gauge, and where there is little to proffer in terms of hope, are transformed and, in one sense, freed by Lowery, whose versed ideas of texture and tactile belonging elevate the body to a space of spiritual resolve:
His eyes close
to anything less alive
than the weight of love
mending him, her finger-tips
saving how he feels
to her
In ‘Departure’, the interaction between the two lovers is again announced through a sensitive notice of ‘finger-tips’, whereby the gentle touch of the woman produces a contentious kind of suffering in the man, who is reduced to her authority. By seeing the body in parts, Lowery not only adapts and converses with Rego’s brushstrokes, which are angular and virile for the way they harshly portray the structure of the human body, but he also comments upon the way in which this way of seeing a relationship can be utilised, and how uncovering a moment in parts can yield both planned and unplanned prospects.
Despite sounding intentional in tone and context, however, the poems none-the-less seem to be constantly looking over their own shoulders; unsure, always offering an alternative to avoid the circumstance of decision:
No traces, though
of breath deflecting the glossing
her skin shimmers. Unless it’s slowed
to such an extent each one learns
what it means, before the next slips
away.
For Lowery, this hesitant going-over, seen here in his tantalisingly discreet poem ‘Sleeper’, allows his poems an escape from certitude, permitting them to cherish the here and now. The finality and banality of definition, for Lowery and Rego, then, is distasteful, as by being tolerant of poise, possibility and movement, the poems and the paintings brush up against the abstraction of art itself, sensibly challenging their own permanence and decisions.
Yet, seen in language, Rego’s exceptional use of stillness and attention to poise is ultimately overthrown, as the form and argument of the poem challenge how and why any developed movement should be left unengaged:
From imago through to adult
takes the space of a night, and gone, transforming
only what they’ve alighted on, and only,
even there, for as long as they were noticed.
Here, in Lowery’s ‘Getting Ready for the Ball’, progression is important, even critical, as it is what will allow the development of the individual subject, as well as promote the ongoing ritual of daily comings and goings.
When movement does enter the poems, though, it is temporary, and uncovered only in the form of minor details, through which a glimpse of Rego’s impermanence can be caught:
He’ll dream hands
reaching up and exploring his. A hurried
breath will gradually steady to a hoarse word.
Geppetto Washing Pinocchio’, entangling themes of labour, concentration and fancy, alights the notion of pausing a moment with the idea of transformation, where even a ‘hurried/ breath’ only changes into ‘a hoarse word’, and is not lost entirely. The momentum with which this happens, however, imbued with the ambling, whimsical connotations of ‘dream’, sets this revolution apart from the context of the poem, so that the idea of being committed to a moment, and being able to withhold abstracts, is, as in Rego’s paintings, merely thought of, but not achieved.
Perhaps the most dynamic factor of Rego’s work is not that her scenes make the idea of opportunity for movement prevalent, but, on the contrary, that they set that movement at permanent odds with the stillness of the painting. Whether or not art is dependent on the act of seeing, there is no doubt that the dynamic interplay between a visual and the thoughts it prompts is integral to the ways Lowery’s art is projected:
He watches her fingers graze
across his image, sees what life might do
to them as she draws him sleeping
Seeing art, made utopic and sensual in ‘Joseph’s Dream’, allows for the system of communication between viewed and viewer to collapse, subsiding, at the same time, the mystique surrounding why and how we examine:
Between them
they’ll have him right. They’ll dress him and clean him
as often as it takes. They’ll raise him
as an image in his own place.
Both quizzical to the idea of family and perceptive of the duty such a formation condones, Lowery’s ‘The Family’ abuses the set-up of Rego’s homely scene by replacing the male figure or father with ‘an image’ which is more alike art, or the poem, itself. The act of responding to visual art, in this light, is unseen, unshaped and, for the fact we can usually never determine the strength of our reaction, often unintentional. When you begin to put that process into poetry, however, the form of thought becomes less abstract, as form itself is utilised as a malleable prospect capable of rationalising and visualising the invisible aspects of visual art: they’ll sleep together blending /half-light into their common cause.
Uniting bodies, partners, ‘half-light’ and a separation from life made so by ‘sleep’, Lowery’s ‘Looking Back’ encapsulates just how intrinsic Rego’s concealment of natural nurture and need is. No matter the relationship, the level of affection, or the level of wisdom, Lowery’s poems confide in the notion of passion, as feverous for art and visuals as they are for abstracts, sentiment and intangible signs of lust.
Charlotte Rowland