This month I have brought together four collections of verse in order to illustrate a broad range of contrasting elements. The authors, two men and three women (no mistake there), the publishers and the books' formats all represent considerable diversity.
As a starting point, and as a touchstone for the others, I want to begin with David Greenslade's EACH BROKEN OBJECT (Reading: Two Rivers Press, 2000). This is Greenslade's sixth collection-he has had two since then-and I am putting it here, somewhat anachronistically because it represents a serious departure from much mainstream publishing, and it ought not to be overlooked. For readers unfamiliar with Greenslade, it is worth saying at the outset that his work is generally well-esteemed in the UK, and he that writes in both English and Welsh (see NEW BRITISH POETRY 6). What is striking about EACH BROKEN OBJECT is the sheer extent to which it performs much of what it endeavors to 'say'. It is oddly sized. It is fully illustrated with black-and-white drawings reminiscent of an instruction manual. Its covers carry images that appear designed to illustrate how it is meant to be held. Even the edges of the pages hold an inscription. Inside, the sixty pages of poems each hang on pegs of named things: 'Paperclip', 'Cardboard Box', 'Watering Can', 'Soup Bowl' and so on. Writing something called 'object poems', Greenslade's perspective-which has very impressive academic credentials-is one that undertakes to question the reading act that suspends words between the point of the mind and the point of its apprehension. That is, between subject and object. At their worst, the poems can descend to the level of a list of intelligent kennings. Here, for example, is a stanza from 'Coat Hanger':
Dry cleaner shuttle, unraveling news/
whisker, feather in radio's wing,/
barbeque fork, tailor's asana, suit's /
boomerang, mirror's loose noose.
This verbless-ness can become cloying. Yet the activity that the mind undertakes, and is seen to be undertaking, in these poems, is often capable of astonishing clarity. My favourite poem in the book is one called 'Hi-Fi'. In this case, more than any other, I think, the 'thing-ness' of the object, and its standing in the apprehension of the poet, achieve a balance. Beginning with news of Hugh MacDairmid's death, Greenslade recounts in a fashion that defies précis how he comes to be alone, in Japan, with a hi-fi and a recording made precious by events:
On this equipment, the year he died,/
