{"id":11905,"date":"2020-12-18T00:14:53","date_gmt":"2020-12-17T23:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11905"},"modified":"2020-12-14T20:19:21","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T19:19:21","slug":"robert-selby-the-coming-down-time-shoestring-press-10-00-reviewed-by-paul-mcloughlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11905","title":{"rendered":"Robert Selby, The Coming-Down Time (Shoestring Press, \u00a310.00) | reviewed by Paul McLoughlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

A WORLD OF NOT MINDING<\/p>\n

Robert Selby\u2019s poems are, as the blurb tells us, \u2018love songs of England\u2019: they set out to record and praise what\u2019s good and will not allow themselves to get distracted. And what\u2019s good is be found in its people. Even the war can come across as a matter of camaraderie and medals with officers thin on the ground and no real sense of conflict or an enemy, because Grandfather George Gissing (no relation to the nineteenth-century novelist of the same name) is not officer class (he turned down bombardier \u2018to remain one of the lads\u2019) and \u2018conflict\u2019 and \u2018enemy\u2019 are alien to the collection\u2019s purposes. This is an important artistic decision on the part of the poet, and a brave one, because someone somewhere is bound to call this a volume about Roger Scruton\u2019s England.<\/p>\n

The Gissings are buried in a Church of England churchyard that permits Methodists to join its \u2018heaped-up past\u2019 as mourners stand, looking out on the North Sea \u2018during a terse, wind-scattered prayer\u2019. The same winds brought \u2018tales of mermen \/ and invasion\u2019 to the young George. It is where a \u2018friendly destroyer\u2019 mistook the village for a firing range and the special constable \u2018rang up the Navy\u2019 asking \u2018please would they kindly stop\u2019. It is the place that is now the \u2018old England\u2019 that \u2018stars in colour supplements\u2019. And the heart of Orford derives not from what is comical or violent, mythical or real, but from the \u2018hearth-comfort\u2019 that is still possible there. It is a possibility that links past to present.<\/p>\n

Gissing works for a living, the latest in a long line of horsemen in \u2018the big estates\u2019, someone we find on one occasion \u2018sheltering \/ from an idle wind and the Lordship\u2019s gaze\u2019. There is no sense that he minded <\/em>his lot, however, and this collection will disappoint all manner of expectations of that kind. Instead, the reader is allowed to imagine Gissing going about his duties with expertise and in the knowledge of a job well done. The \u2018big guns\u2019 he worked on in the Royal Artillery gave him his sixty-year battle with leg ulcers. \u2018Eligible for recompense \/ he filed for nothing\u2019:<\/p>\n

only from God the narrow peace in which<\/p>\n

to see his children and grandchildren grow up<\/p>\n

like miracle marrows to flaunt<\/p>\n

at the County Show, however flawed.<\/p>\n

This opening sequence displays a pleasing talent for concision: the Gissings die \u2018within a tell-tale time of each other\u2019; his daughter, the poet\u2019s mother, recalls George straining elderflower onto a tin bath \u2018turning light into wine\u2019; \u2018Memories, like poppies, are stirred by trauma\u2019. He responds to the end of the war as if it were nothing much and certainly nothing to excuse triumphalism.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s central section (entitled \u2018Shadows on the Barley\u2019 after its final poem) includes the long (three-and-a-half-page) war poem, \u2018Upon the Altar Laid\u2019, a kind of rhapsody in verse, featuring the \u2018music\u2019 of the composer, George Butterworth, who \u2018fell holding Munster Alley\u2019. \u2018An Aurelian Watches His Wife\u2019 is a fastidious lepidopterist\u2019s monologue addressed to his unfaithful wife, a protest bursting with sexual jealousy.<\/p>\n

The closing sequence, \u2018Chevening\u2019, is named after one of \u2018the big estates\u2019 (now a Government grace-and-favour home) and it is here we first meet the poet\u2019s Canadian girlfriend. Pronouns are always important in relationships: \u2018the train pulls you away from me \/ our weekend in my country.\u2019 Where the North Sea brought Suffolk \u2018word of mermen \/ and invasion\u2019, Chevening provides \u2018a moonlight-divined \/ sanctum \/ for illicit lovers \/ or a murdered governess \/\/ scanning the water \/ for her own reflection\u2019 but the poet is hopeful she will yet call his home hers, too. In the graveyard<\/p>\n

The tombs lie real as death\u2019s day,<\/p>\n

rearing in all our futures,<\/p>\n

except England\u2019s.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They died in childbirth and of the plague,<\/p>\n

they died in their beds and on the veldt,<\/p>\n

on Salient and Somme,<\/p>\n

and here, as lit candles, live on.<\/p>\n

At the door you leave a dollar donation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hers is money that \u2018bears the Queen\u2019s head but isn\u2019t sterling.\u2019 But it\u2019s enough to take us back to World War II with the Canadian Army at Dieppe, Juno Beach and in Holland and to modern day \u2018Ottawa parks in June, awash with tulip petals\u2019. The poems that conclude the collection couple a wide sweep that considers the historical legacy and plight of England with the poet\u2019s highly personal hopes for a permanent union with his Canadian friend:<\/p>\n

Yes, England did all it could.<\/p>\n

All of it becomes propaganda with an airmail stamp.<\/p>\n

All of it evocable at a whiff of buddleia.<\/p>\n

It wreathed the dead, straightened the steeple,<\/p>\n

placed the fielders, re-glazed the red phone box.<\/p>\n

Now I must wait for the needle<\/p>\n

of your heart\u2019s compass to unspin,<\/p>\n

and see where it stops.<\/p>\n

Selby\u2019s is an intriguing first collection, innovatively both old-fashioned and of its time. He\u2019s a poet looking to praise who succeeds in finding ways of doing it. If he has a bee in his bonnet about anything, then it\u2019s parking.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0Paul McLoughlin<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A WORLD OF NOT MINDING Robert Selby\u2019s poems are, as the blurb tells us, \u2018love songs of England\u2019: they set out to record and praise what\u2019s good and will not allow themselves to get distracted. And what\u2019s good is be found in its people. Even the war can come across as a matter of camaraderie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283,18],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nRobert Selby, The Coming-Down Time (Shoestring Press, \u00a310.00) | reviewed by Paul McLoughlin - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11905\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Robert Selby, The Coming-Down Time (Shoestring Press, \u00a310.00) | reviewed by Paul McLoughlin - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A WORLD OF NOT MINDING Robert Selby\u2019s poems are, as the blurb tells us, \u2018love songs of England\u2019: they set out to record and praise what\u2019s good and will not allow themselves to get distracted. 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