{"id":9763,"date":"2018-09-10T18:37:25","date_gmt":"2018-09-10T17:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9763"},"modified":"2018-10-16T17:55:55","modified_gmt":"2018-10-16T16:55:55","slug":"mary-leader-she-lives-there-still-reviewed-by-ian-pople","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9763","title":{"rendered":"Mary Leader | <strong><em>She Lives There Still<\/strong><\/em> | reviewed by Ian Pople"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Mary Leader | <em>She Lives There Still<\/em> | Shearsman Books \u00a39.95 <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i65.tinypic.com\/33pg50x.jpg\" width=\"220\" align=\"left\" style=\"margin-right: 10px\"><\/p>\n<p>The cover of Mary Leader\u2019s <em>She Lives There Still<\/em> is entitled \u2018Wildflowers with a View of Dun Laoghaire, Dublin\u2019.  The picture is detailed and colourful contrasting the lower half of the picture with its whites, golds and blues, in the daisies and poppies, and the surrounding green of the grass.  In the top half, the artist uses mauves and blue-greys to suggest the sea and the view towards Dun Laoghaire.  While too much can be read into the choice of a cover, the range of colours and the sense of contrasting perspective is present in Leader\u2019s poems.  The poems range from a variation on a poem from the seventeenth century poet, Ravenscroft, through to two long, very personal sequences.  <\/p>\n<p>The first of these sequences is \u2018Cornucopia of Arcadia\u2019, which is prefaced with a quotation from Tsvetaeva, \u2018Love lives on words, and dies of deeds\u2026 The word, which for me is already the thing, is all I want.\u2019  This sonnet sequence purports to \u2018report\u2019 Leader\u2019s \u2018relationship\u2019 with the academic Arkady Plotnitsky, while they were both working at Purdue university.  The scare quotes in the previous sentence are necessary because the sequence details Leader\u2019s clear attachment to Plotnitsky, even while Plotnitsky has a girlfriend, who dedicates a book to him.  In the midst of the sequence, Leader writes \u2018I did not get to be with Fred, and I \/ Caved in.  I did not get to be with you, \/ And by the way I liked you much better, \/ But did not cave in.\u2019 To this reader, such revelation might almost be embarrassing; Leader seemingly parades her attitude to Plotnitsky, her commitment to that attitude to him and the way in which her commitment affects all her dealings with him.  <\/p>\n<p>I was reminded of the section on \u2018The Look\u2019 in Being and Nothingness. Here, Sartre describes the moment when a person is caught looking through a keyhole. Sartre suggests that this is the moment when the I is most fully itself, is most delimited and delineated.  Leader\u2019s undoubted skill is to write from the perspective of both the I who participates in the relationship, who seems so close to the empirical Mary Leader.  But also write from the \u2018onlooker\u2019s\u2019 point of view, who sees the \u2018relationship\u2019 being outlined.  As we can see from the brief quotation above, the writing conveys these layers of perception in language which is essentially unadorned. Thus, there is little \u2018poetic\u2019 to intervene between the reader and the reading.  In this sequence, the sense of the \u2018poetic\u2019 is held in the fourteen line forms the poems have, as well in the ten syllable lines, which often break on weak syllables, or between, for example, possessives and their nouns. So, the \u2018poetic\u2019 itself, is debunked and subverted.   <\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere, however, Leader is happy to write in more \u2018conventionally\u2019 heightened language, \u2018Where laden boughs stoop to her fingertips, \/ there she does not hesitate to grasp red.\u2019 Or this from the poem \u2018St\u2019, \u2018Such left wagons tilt into the gloaming, \/ perpetual. Such tilted rectangles \/ resemble, but ar not, tombstones, forlorn \/under high vasty stars.\u2019   Both these excerpts suggest Leader\u2019s stylistic range, although they also show that her rigid adherence to the ten syllable line can occasion some tension and clumsiness.  Clearly, part of Leader\u2019s poetic is to jostle a sense of traditional form and as we have seen, she is very adept at playing with the readers\u2019 expectations.  As the note from the New Yorker on the back cover suggests, Leader has a \u2018quite remarkable sensibility, which is one of the most self-possessed in contemporary poetry.\u2019 <\/p>\n<p><strong> by Ian Pople<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mary Leader | She Lives There Still | Shearsman Books \u00a39.95 The cover of Mary Leader\u2019s She Lives There Still is entitled \u2018Wildflowers with a View of Dun Laoghaire, Dublin\u2019. The picture is detailed and colourful contrasting the lower half of the picture with its whites, golds and blues, in the daisies and poppies, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"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":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Mary Leader | She Lives There Still | 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=9763\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mary Leader | She Lives There Still | reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mary Leader | She Lives There Still | Shearsman Books \u00a39.95 The cover of Mary Leader\u2019s She Lives There Still is entitled \u2018Wildflowers with a View of Dun Laoghaire, Dublin\u2019. The picture is detailed and colourful contrasting the lower half of the picture with its whites, golds and blues, in the daisies and poppies, and [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9763\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-09-10T17:37:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-10-16T16:55:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/i65.tinypic.com\/33pg50x.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ian Pople\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Ian Pople\" \/>\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\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9763\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9763\",\"name\":\"Mary Leader | She Lives There Still | reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2018-09-10T17:37:25+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-10-16T16:55:55+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/1e4c20066db3d71097155619e6d443a9\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9763#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9763\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9763#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Mary Leader | She Lives There Still | reviewed by Ian Pople\"}]},{\"@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\/1e4c20066db3d71097155619e6d443a9\",\"name\":\"Ian Pople\",\"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\":\"Ian Pople\"},\"description\":\"Ian Pople's Spillway is published by Anstruther Press.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=21\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Mary Leader | She Lives There Still | reviewed by Ian Pople - 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":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9763","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Mary Leader | She Lives There Still | reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review","og_description":"Mary Leader | She Lives There Still | Shearsman Books \u00a39.95 The cover of Mary Leader\u2019s She Lives There Still is entitled \u2018Wildflowers with a View of Dun Laoghaire, Dublin\u2019. 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