{"id":12185,"date":"2022-06-29T14:51:14","date_gmt":"2022-06-29T13:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12185"},"modified":"2022-06-29T15:26:09","modified_gmt":"2022-06-29T14:26:09","slug":"paul-henry-as-if-to-sing-reviewed-by-jack-mckenna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12185","title":{"rendered":"Paul Henry | As If To Sing <\/em><\/strong>| reviewed by Jack McKenna"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"As-If-To-Sing-Cover-72dpi-rgb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Paul Henry |\u00a0As If To Sing<\/em> | Seren Books: \u00a39.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sorrowful songs flow from Paul Henry\u2019s newest collection, As If To Sing<\/em>. These are careful, melodious poems that learn to listen for the watery current that carries love and loss together in our everyday lives.<\/p>\n

The opening sonnet, \u2018Tributary\u2019, follows the speaker returning to where he \u2018heard a woman\u2019s grief in clear water\u2019. A spring with a metal cup for passing walkers is the source of this music. As a tributary is a current that leads into a bigger body, the poem emerges from Henry listening to a woman on the radio describing her husband passing from COVID-19.<\/p>\n

I knelt where her words had burrowed
\nBack inside the hill, her grief to my lips,
\nHer sorrow to my ear.<\/p>\n

This collective feeling, however, is \u2018a public grief turned private\u2019. The words transcend their speaker and, in receiving them, nourish the listener like water.<\/p>\n

This aqueous movement is enabled by its musicality, it is \u2018a grief unconscious of its song\u2019. But watch how the speaker kneels, carefully placing the \u2018sorrow to my ear\u2019. One must tune into the grief for its latent music. Such positioning is central to the collection\u2019s first section as the speaker encourages this receptivity at various points, urging one to \u2018press your ear to the white door\u2019, \u2018speak into my good ear\u2019, or \u2018hear the ghost choir\u2019.<\/p>\n

He encourages this because of music\u2019s power, which is visible in the titular poem, \u2018As if to Sing\u2019. It describes how four \u2018Welsh boys\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2026 for safe-keeping,
\nthey packed their hearts
\ninto a song.<\/p>\n

By embracing song, when tragedy strikes and \u2018only one in four parts \/ of their harmony \/ returned\u2019, the \u2018song still held them all\u2019. Again, the song transcends its original context and, in this case, replicates this context within its own temporality. A song preserves outside of time. \u2018Still\u2019 points to both to the moment\u2019s permanence and its eternal stasis, forever evoking when their comradery flourished in the \u2018sun\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018If\u2019 in the poem and collection\u2019s title, then, refers to the listener\u2019s ability to hear this latent music. After recognizing resonant songs in grief and war, the second and strongest section tunes into the poet\u2019s memories of his three sons.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Tree out the Back\u2019 portrays three \u2018boys\u2019 mischievously climbing a tree. There is more careful positioning in the poem\u2019s verticality. Looking up, \u2018you can\u2019t tell legs \/ from branches\u2019. This distills the experience of a parent watching their children grow into a simple image; an obscured image that is powerfully and rhythmically utilised to show how time can suddenly pass:<\/p>\n

And now the grizzly boughs bend
\nUnder the weight of three men.<\/p>\n

These boys-turned-men \u2018carve their names on the late sun\u2019, they leave their signature in the memory\u2019s light. Despite the emotional resonance of such scenes, the collection\u2019s stanzas are neat and move with measured syntax. They describe such tender images as a baby breathing with mouth \u2018barely open, barely closed\u2019, a haircut that \u2018this year his mother\u2019s on tip toes\u2019 for, and how \u2018boys sailing twigs\u2019 in a birdbath\u2019s \u2018brightness\u2019. Henry\u2019s strength is in his poetry\u2019s intimacy. Moments are minimally yet evocatively portrayed to access what Seamus Heaney calls \u2018the music of what happens\u2019.<\/p>\n

This section\u2019s concluding poem, \u2018The Boys in the Branches\u2019, returns to the tree climbers:<\/p>\n

I think I see their shadows
\nIf I shield my eyes.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t cry.
\nThey simply ran on ahead.<\/p>\n

Emotive moments in the collection are marked by fragmented stanzas. Despite clearly aligning, distance is highlighted in these breaks. What is implicit in this distance between stanzas, between father and his sons, is silence. Silence represents this section\u2019s music. Like in \u2018Birthday Cut\u2019, it is a \u2018silence that is understood\u2019, in that the resonance of a moment is so loud and clear that none can escape it. The necessity for song is to celebrate and preserve these powerful but transient moments. Like how the \u2018Welsh boy\u2019 of \u2018As if to Sing\u2019 must sing to be with his three missing soldier friends, the poet must sing for the three boys that his sons no longer are.<\/p>\n

The final section returns to the watery imagery of the first, centred around the long poem, \u2018The Key to Penllain<\/em>\u2019. It depicts the speaker\u2019s dreamy search through sand for a key. The poem passes through surreal sightings of Brown Helen, featured in Henry\u2019s previous collections, \u2018Hermes strumming some Dylan, \/ the midwife Elethea Gwyn\u2019, and more until \u2018the key pulls them in \/ heads first \u2026 into the void\u2019. Like Bob Dylan\u2019s \u2018Desolation Row\u2019, the poem tracks a surreal journey peppered with vignettes that ultimately points towards entropy.<\/p>\n

All \u2018except Penllain<\/em>\u2019 follow \u2018into the O<\/em>\u2019. Penllain, described as \u2018a terraced house in Cei Newydd\u2019, is portrayed in the following poem as a ship at sea. It is the keynote of the collection, a house of memories serving as a solid foundation for the poet caught in the tides of time.<\/p>\n

Despite being the weakest section, because these dreamy and surreal scenes lack intimacy, it complements the overall musicality of the text. By anchoring these poems in Pennlain, the house works like a musical key, a harmonic foundation for all the notes to emerge from.<\/p>\n

Of course, his Pennlain is personal, hence why the long poem repeatedly remarks on the speaker\u2019s \u2018aloneness\u2019 and the latter poem on how the ship is \u2018crewless\u2019. It is his receptivity that saves him, as Tim Buckley\u2019s Song to the Siren<\/em> enters the speaker\u2019s dreams to remind him that \u2018she was here\u2019.<\/p>\n

The final poem, \u2018C\u00e2n Hwyr\u2019, replies by singing back in Welsh. Despite the distance between them and the change of language, the songs sound over the waters. Paul Henry\u2019s collection As If To Sing<\/em> shows the poet learning to listen for the music latent in life, finding it in his own memories, and harnessing it to connect with another. Expression completes this movement, songs must be released and received if they are to connect and hold us.<\/p>\n

And keep this song, its light.<\/p>\n

In a collection that celebrates intimacy, Henry shows how there is music even in silence and that hearing it can help us meet in the timeless space that is song.<\/p>\n

reviewed by Jack McKenna<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Henry |\u00a0As If To Sing | Seren Books: \u00a39.99 Sorrowful songs flow from Paul Henry\u2019s newest collection, As If To Sing. These are careful, melodious poems that learn to listen for the watery current that carries love and loss together in our everyday lives. The opening sonnet, \u2018Tributary\u2019, follows the speaker returning to where […]<\/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],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nPaul Henry | As If To Sing | reviewed by Jack McKenna - 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=12185\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Paul Henry | As If To Sing | reviewed by Jack McKenna - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Paul Henry |\u00a0As If To Sing | Seren Books: \u00a39.99 Sorrowful songs flow from Paul Henry\u2019s newest collection, As If To Sing. 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