{"id":2379,"date":"2013-04-03T11:52:17","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T11:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2379"},"modified":"2016-01-23T18:25:28","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T17:25:28","slug":"george-szirtes-and-matthew-sweeney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2379","title":{"rendered":"New Collections from George Szirtes and Matthew Sweeney, reviewed by Laura Webb"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Szirtes, Bad Machine<\/i> (Bloodaxe Books) \u00a39.95
\nMatthew Sweeney, Horse Music<\/i> (Bloodaxe Books) \u00a38.95<\/p>\n

The title of Sweeney\u2019s latest collection is apt, for the effect of Horse Music<\/i> grows in force as the cumulative effect of the poems mounts up, in this working the same way as a musical composition. The horse of the title represents the forms of otherness that pervade the collection, not only of animal life, but of the unsayable and shifting aspects of contemporary human and animal experience \u2013 bereavement, fate, isolation, hope, regret, completeness, ecological concern, the surrealness of the domestic \u2013 that, when worked hardest, poetry can give name to more succinctly and with greater specificity than most other expressive forms.<\/p>\n

At its best in this collection, Sweeney\u2019s poetry carries the weight of genuine emotion, and when he successfully harnesses this with form, lexicon and sound patterning, the effect is at once moving and awe-inspiring; as in the poem \u2018Haiku for My Father\u2019, in which he addresses individually, delicately and with great honesty the aspects of life which death doesn\u2019t permit to be wrapped up or finally closed.<\/p>\n

The collection also sensitively addresses the violence and tenderness inherent in the relationship between animal and human forms of life, in poems such as \u2018The Photos on the Wall\u2019 (which wonderfully describes \u2018the hoof-frothed foam\u2019), \u2018Sausages\u2019, \u2018The Naming of Horses\u2019, \u2018A Song About a Crow\u2019, \u2018The Sick Cow\u2019 and the title poem \u2018Horse Music\u2019, so much so that the use of language to tread the borderline between human-animal and non-human animal becomes one of its dominant concerns.<\/p>\n

Whilst the collection as a whole gains momentum, the ends of earlier poems let those poems off the hook rather than interrogating their subjects far enough; \u2018Pan on the Pink Bridge\u2019, \u2018Burning\u2019 and \u2018How I Was Made 20 Years Younger\u2019 fall into this category. Otherwise strong poems feel let down by a slight obviousness of description, thus \u2018no scarecrow looks like another\/ some are tall, some small\u2019 (\u2018The Village of Scarecrows\u2019), \u2018I\u2019d rent a room in hilly Alfama\u2019 (\u2018The Blue Hammock\u2019); at other times however, and sometimes within the same poem, this clear-sighted aspect and simple description takes on a unique and uncomplicated truthfulness: \u2018The seagulls are huge there, and musical\u2019 (\u2018The Blue Hammock\u2019), and \u2018the silver birch with my initials stretched\/ upward to its far-off father, the moon\u2019 (\u2018The Blue Hammock\u2019). In particular, as these examples demonstrate, Sweeney is accomplished in his use of both caesurae and enjambment. Other highlights of the collection include \u2018The Bomb\u2019, \u2018The Fall\u2019, \u2018The Glass Chess Set\u2019, \u2018Communiqu\u00e9\u2019, \u2018The Slow Story of No\u2019, and \u2018The Yellow Golf Ball on the Lawn\u2019.<\/p>\n

The use of form in Horse Music<\/i> likewise gathers pace as it moves forward, so that if the repetitions of the early sestina \u2018Confiscated\u2019 feel somewhat lacklustre by the poem\u2019s end, the sestina \u2018Eternity Strand\u2019 near the collection\u2019s close feels as fresh and elemental at its end as at its opening. Horse Music<\/i> is a collection in which, whilst not every poem wholly satisfies, each forms part of a vibrant picture which resolutely does.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

George Szirtes’ collection Bad Machine<\/i><\/a> addresses the theme of the body and its beauties and foibles. It shares with Sweeney\u2019s collection a desire to reach across the borders from the human body to the bodies of animals, notably in the strongly successful \u2018Fish Music\u2019, \u2018The Cat Speaks of Hunger\u2019 and \u2018Canzone: Animal\u2019. Szirtes in this collection demonstrates a mastery of form \u2013 his sestina \u2018Postcard: The Rower\u2019 (1. Rower<\/i>) feels renewed and reinvigorated by its repetitious language as the form progresses. Throughout Bad Machine<\/i>, Szirtes seems to chew language over in order to get everything out of the words he has selected. His formal preferences \u2013 the sestina, the canzone, mirror poems \u2013 tend towards repetition, and Szirtes uses this recurrence of words to his poems\u2019 advantage, leaving no meaning undisturbed or uncovered. Despite the threats and attacks upon the body described by Szirtes, his poems strive to form bodies of language which renew old cells and stave off nullity \u2013 \u2018Actually, yes\u2019, \u2018We Love Life Whenever We Can\u2019 and \u2018Snake Ghost\u2019 do this vigorously. The collection\u2019s minimenta also thrive, working hard to cover the variousness of their topics from diverse angles.<\/p>\n

The collection\u2019s weaker poems, notably \u2018Snapshots From a Riot\u2019 and \u2018Children of Albion\u2019, are two of its more political poems. The poems succeed and, whilst not didactic, manage originality in their description, but lack some of the strong verbal ingenuity and formal tenaciousness of Szirtes\u2019s other poems, as the language is pulled in too many directions. Perhaps it is also that the poems\u2019 topics seem too large, vital and difficult to be addressed in such small spaces.<\/p>\n

The poems work to give linguistic form to physical and invisible bodies of human experience, and in this they are accomplished. \u2018Footnotes\u2019 is successful tribute to that body part; \u2018Canzone: The Small of the Back\u2019 is a beautiful homage to memory, life, health, love, gratefulness and, in Szirtes\u2019s phrase, \u2018of minutiae, of all the vast small-\/ ness of the universe that is this field and that field\u2019; the title poem \u2018Canzone: Bad Machine\u2019 gracefully undresses the concept of the human body, aging and health, declaring \u2018There\u2019s no machine that\u2019s not a bad machine\u2019, and \u2018McGuffin\u2019s Tune\u2019 uncannily describes the forgotten tune of a song as calling \u2018Like death itself: clear, serious, perplexed\u2019. At its best, Szirtes\u2019s poetry has an ability to name the previously nameless, to put its linguistic finger precisely on the pulse of a hazy, unarticulated concept, and give voice to moments of shared human existence which under normal circumstances ebb away unspoken. A critic will struggle to describe the collection\u2019s linguistic grace and depth of subject as well as the poems themselves, which can both be garnered from this short excerpt from \u2018Canzone: Animal\u2019:<\/p>\n

Keep moving, thoughts; listen out for bones<\/p>\n

whispering in the flesh, their song like smoke,<\/p>\n

their words those befitting the fleet animal<\/p>\n

glimpsed in the distance, leaping into reckoning.<\/p>\n

 
\nLaura Webb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Laura Webb<\/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":"\nNew Collections from George Szirtes and Matthew Sweeney, reviewed by Laura Webb - 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=2379\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"New Collections from George Szirtes and Matthew Sweeney, reviewed by Laura Webb - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by Laura Webb\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2379\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-04-03T11:52:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-01-23T17:25:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2379\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2379\",\"name\":\"New Collections from George Szirtes and Matthew Sweeney, reviewed by Laura Webb - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-04-03T11:52:17+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-01-23T17:25:28+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2379#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2379\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2379#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"New Collections from George Szirtes and Matthew Sweeney, reviewed by Laura Webb\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"description\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"caption\":\"The Manchester Review\"},\"description\":\"The Manchester Review was founded in 2008 and is published by the Centre for New Writing at The University of Manchester. 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