SECOND NATURE
Hilary Mellon
AUTUMN MANUSCRIPT by Mervyn Linford (ISBN 0-9541844-0-8) from The Littoral Press, 38 Barringtons, 10 Sutton Road, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, SS2 5NA. 50pp. £3-50. If ordering by post within the UK, please send a cheque (with 50p added on for post & packaging) made out to Mervyn Linford at the above address. For orders outside the UK, please pay in banknotes and add the appropriate p&p.
It has been a long time since I last reviewed a poetry book. Back then it was usually because I was asked to - and I had little choice of who or what I reviewed. This is different. I am writing this because of a desire to share my enthusiasm for the new collection by Mervyn Linford.
I approached it somewhat cautiously at first - expecting it to be mainly nature poetry, and knowing that I am not always over-fond of the genre. To say that I was surprised by the effect the poems had on me is an understatement. They leapt out, grabbed me by the throat, and shook me so violently that I was left speechless, save for a barely articulated "Wow".
What struck me later, after the initial assault had abated, was how tightly and carefully structured the poems were. Linford is a craftsman of the finest sort. He carves meaning and metaphor, observation and emotion, into dynamic shapes - leaving no unpolished images.
What shines from these poems is not only Linford's obvious love of the countryside. It is also his knowledge and appreciation of the work of earlier poets. Old rhythms are picked up, played, and released again.
Familiar cadences whisper through the pages. One is made aware, by echoes or more deliberate pastiche, that one is connected to the traditional pulse of poetry. It is difficult to choose examples, but look at 'The Immemorial Elms' where
Inbetween the roads and railway
Down an old forgotten lane
There is still the sun's soliloquy of gold:
Where the shadows fall obliquely
In an effort to explain
How the evening light surrenders and consoles.
or maybe 'Hopkinesque' which
ends
See! As the wind wanes
How the heart's hope
Shivers and settles to a lucid image.
And that pulse of poetry beats, in Linford's work, with the energy of life itself - because he is always connected to the rhythms and cadences of nature, and to the changing seasons. Autumn is a recurring theme, used both literally and as a metaphor for advancing age.
We find it in 'September Song' where
There's not a cloud to sully in the sky
Where blue is overarching and unbound
And autumn an advancement of the mind.
A robin's thin solemnity of sound
Dislodges here and there a single leaf
That adds to the mosaic of the ground.
and also in 'Love Poem', which
ends
I see beyond the semblance that is you
Where otherness is fated to exist.
The sky reflects your eyes of palest blue
Where love - despite the season surely thrives -
You are to me the gender and the gist
Of everything that's sacred and survives.
and again in 'Together', which
begins
Let us together
Through the dying season
Walk to the corner
Of a time remembered;
But, however connected he is to centuries of poetry and to the louder pulses of life itself, there is still Linford's unmistakable voice rising and falling between the covers of AUTUMN MANUSCRIPT. And, for me, it is captured wonderfully in this final quotation - the opening stanza of 'Moonstruck', describing the universal struggle of a poet
Sitting at a desk,
Small minded
In a small room,
Perplexed and wrestling
For the perfect image.
Hilary Mellon
(January 2002)