{"id":3180,"date":"2013-11-03T12:48:29","date_gmt":"2013-11-03T11:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=3180"},"modified":"2016-01-23T18:04:07","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T17:04:07","slug":"anne-compton-alongside-fitzhenry-and-whiteside-c14-95-reviewed-by-ian-pople","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=3180","title":{"rendered":"Anne Compton, Alongside<\/em> (Fitzhenry and Whiteside) $14.95"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first saw this book, with the ghost-like figures on its cover, and that slightly nervy title, I was inevitably reminded of Eliot\u2019s lines from The Waste Land <\/i>\u2018Who is the third who walks always beside you?\/ When I count, there are only you and I together.\/ But when I look ahead up the white road\/\u00a0 There is always another one walking beside you\u2019.\u00a0 Anne Compton\u2019s fine new book doesn\u2019t contain Eliot\u2019s febrile undermining of appearances, Compton\u2019s world is far, far more domestic, but it does examine the fragility of what gives us comfort. And it carries out that examination with a meticulous attention.<\/p>\n

The last time I reviewed Anne Compton in these pages, I mentioned the sense of ecriture feminine <\/i>in her writing.\u00a0 In Compton\u2019s case, this kind of address, the charge if you like, of the poem is present in almost all of her miraculous opening lines:\u00a0 \u2018Even in this room, the unlived life\u2019s a draft of ionized air\u2019 \u2018Steeple\u2019; \u2018The day of the linens in spring is a set-aside\u2019 \u2018Rope Handles\u2019; \u2018They are hungry when they arrive, a hunger wide and deep, no edge to it.\u2019 \u2018Bread\u2019. \u00a0In these lines, Compton picks a particular object or moment and establishes that it is both those things, both object and time.\u00a0 Thus, objects are stages in a process which Compton develops with a meticulous care.\u00a0 And, as noted, that process can be domestic, but it is a domesticity which is a striking combination of both the crystalline and the fragile.<\/p>\n

What is fragile is the sense of available time, time with partners, with children, with the world itself.\u00a0 In the first poem in the book, \u2018The Poet as Invalid\u2019, Compton conflates a lover with something far more transcendent,<\/p>\n

\u2018There\u2019s sleep towards morning.\u00a0 The edges of it,
\nthe short way back to everything he knows.<\/p>\n

God\u2019s breath is the mist in the garden at daybreak,
\na deer moving through it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s me talking.\u00a0 He believes in the deer.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d be the one to notice a man cupping a hand over a smoke;
\na woman, freshening her lips in the caf\u00e9 after lunch.\u00a0 No mirror.<\/p>\n

So the fragility here is the loss of the partner who provides insight, who notices<\/i> things that the writer possibly misses.\u00a0 This is the partner who adds another dimension, a kind of omniscience to the life of the writer, and it is clear that this dimension is under threat.\u00a0 Whereas the writer of the poem is \u2018talking\u2019 it is the man who does the \u2018believing\u2019, who sees, perhaps, the life in the deer.<\/p>\n

The deer reoccurs in another of the best poems in the book, \u2018The biographer addresses the railing\u2019, which begins \u2018This morning at eight, a doe in the garden stood quietly\/ while I spoke to her from behind the verandah railing.\u2019 This quiet moment of communion with the silent animal spurs the \u2018biographer\u2019 into a lyrical essay on the relationship between the way animals do without language and the way language, words, may end up, however innocently, falsifying the record. Compton\u2019s great achievement is to create a poetry which both worries away at the world and reconstitutes it;\u00a0 for whom the world is not fragile so much as wondrous and delicate.
\n 
\nIan Pople<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first saw this book, with the ghost-like figures on its cover, and that slightly nervy title, I was inevitably reminded of Eliot\u2019s lines from The Waste Land \u2018Who is the third who walks always beside you?\/ When I count, there are only you and I together.\/ But when I look ahead up the […]<\/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":"\nAnne Compton, Alongside (Fitzhenry and Whiteside) $14.95 - 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=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=3180\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Anne Compton, Alongside (Fitzhenry and Whiteside) $14.95 - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When I first saw this book, with the ghost-like figures on its cover, and that slightly nervy title, I was inevitably reminded of Eliot\u2019s lines from The Waste Land \u2018Who is the third who walks always beside you?\/ When I count, there are only you and I together.\/ But when I look ahead up the […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=3180\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-11-03T11:48:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-01-23T17:04:07+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=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=3180\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=3180\",\"name\":\"Anne Compton, Alongside (Fitzhenry and Whiteside) $14.95 - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-11-03T11:48:29+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-01-23T17:04:07+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=3180#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=3180\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=3180#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Anne Compton, Alongside (Fitzhenry and Whiteside) $14.95\"}]},{\"@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. We aspire to bring together online, without a paper edition, the best of international writing from well-known, established writers alongside new, relatively unknown poets and prose-writers.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=45\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Anne Compton, Alongside (Fitzhenry and Whiteside) $14.95 - The Manchester Review","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=3180","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Anne Compton, Alongside (Fitzhenry and Whiteside) $14.95 - The Manchester Review","og_description":"When I first saw this book, with the ghost-like figures on its cover, and that slightly nervy title, I was inevitably reminded of Eliot\u2019s lines from The Waste Land \u2018Who is the third who walks always beside you?\/ When I count, there are only you and I together.\/ But when I look ahead up the […]","og_url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=3180","og_site_name":"The Manchester Review","article_published_time":"2013-11-03T11:48:29+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-01-23T17:04:07+00:00","author":"The Manchester Review","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"The Manchester Review","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=3180","url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=3180","name":"Anne Compton, Alongside (Fitzhenry and Whiteside) $14.95 - The Manchester Review","isPartOf":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website"},"datePublished":"2013-11-03T11:48:29+00:00","dateModified":"2016-01-23T17:04:07+00:00","author":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=3180#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=3180"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=3180#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Anne Compton, Alongside (Fitzhenry and Whiteside) $14.95"}]},{"@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. We aspire to bring together online, without a paper edition, the best of international writing from well-known, established writers alongside new, relatively unknown poets and prose-writers.","url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=45"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2PuXo-Pi","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3180"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3180"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5541,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3180\/revisions\/5541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}