{"id":1681,"date":"2012-09-04T20:28:44","date_gmt":"2012-09-04T19:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1302"},"modified":"2016-01-23T18:39:15","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T17:39:15","slug":"ian-parks-the-landing-stage-lapwing-press-1000-the-exiles-house-waterloo-house-1000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1681","title":{"rendered":"Two Collections from Ian Parks, reviewed by Ian Pople"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ian Parks, <em>The Landing Stage<\/em> (Lapwing Press) \u00a310.00; <em>The Exile\u2019s House<\/em> (Waterloo House) \u00a310.00<\/p>\n<p>Parks is not afraid of the definite article; not only in the titles of his books, which also includes <em>The Cage <\/em>but also with the titles of the poems: \u2018The Northern Lights\u2019, \u2018The Girl in the Garden\u2019, \u2018The March\u2019. He also has poems entitled \u2018Miners\u2019, \u2018Eclipse\u2019 and \u2018Standards\u2019. The use of the definite article establishes, by definition (!!) parameters around the subject. And the definite article pushes the noun it precedes into a position of particular importance. That importance is part of what makes Parks\u2019 poems so strong, because he\u2019s not afraid of holding a large subject and making it his own. Of course, ownership is part of the job of every poet, but much of Park\u2019s achievement as a poet is the way ownership is held in Park\u2019s wonderful technique.<br \/>\nThere is a kind of sculpted inevitability about Parks\u2019 poems. Some of that inevitability is to do with the way in which Parks holds the line in elegant balance, \u2018I envied him, the man without a name\/who spent each winter where the tide begins\u2019 (Sleeping on the Island) And nearly any line from Parks has that poise and elegance. Such poise and elegance brings to these two, necessary books a warm accumulation which is beguiling and continuously engaging. Similar to the wonderful, and equally under-appreciated, American poet William Matthews, these poems engage the reader with a world and character that is sensitive and empathetic.<\/p>\n<p>Parks is known as a lyric poet, described as \u2018the finest love poet of his generation\u2019.The love poetry is a strong presence in both these volumes; not only to the women in his life, but also for his father and a pungent, heart-stopping elegy for his son.Parks father was a miner, amongst other things(!), and Parks writes beautifully about the complicated relationship he had with his father. Parks, the \u2018love\u2019 poet uses that technique to describe the mining industry set around Parks home town of Mexborough; in particular, he adumbrates both the miners\u2019 strike of the eighties and the heart-breaking legacy of those years. In the poem \u2018Miners\u2019, Parks writes about those miners during the strike, about how the enforced idleness from the work brought them closer to both their families but also other centres of emotional attention, \u2018\u2026 crossed the field\/ to where the old pit ponies\/were at grass\/ to whisper at them,\/\/ stroke their twitching ears.\/I found them there\/embarrassed by my smile\u2019. In this emotional range, Parks comes close to his hero Auden, whom he writes about so movingly in the long poem, \u2018The Double Man\u2019. Unlike more contemporary Audenistas, Parks eschews the Auden voice and manner.  What Parks takes from Auden is a profound acceptance of the human condition, an acceptance which Parks adumbrates with an exemplary technique, and exemplary tenderness.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ian Parks, The Landing Stage (Lapwing Press) \u00a310.00; The Exile\u2019s House (Waterloo House) \u00a310.00 Parks is not afraid of the definite article; not only in the titles of his books, which also includes The Cage but also with the titles of the poems: \u2018The Northern Lights\u2019, \u2018The Girl in the Garden\u2019, \u2018The March\u2019. He also [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[128,153,278],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Two Collections from Ian Parks, reviewed by Ian Pople - 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=1681\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Two Collections from Ian Parks, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ian Parks, The Landing Stage (Lapwing Press) \u00a310.00; The Exile\u2019s House (Waterloo House) \u00a310.00 Parks is not afraid of the definite article; not only in the titles of his books, which also includes The Cage but also with the titles of the poems: \u2018The Northern Lights\u2019, \u2018The Girl in the Garden\u2019, \u2018The March\u2019. 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