The book cover image is a study of Fra Angelico’s Annunciation.
Sarah Cave & Rupert M. Loydell
(Cornwall,
UK: Analogue Flashback Books, 2017).
Review
by Joey Madia
Several
months ago I reviewed Rupert M. Loydell’s twentieth collection of poetry, Dear
Mary, which is a series of
(far-ranging) meditations on the Virgin Mary and the circumstances of her
miraculous conception. This follow-up, co-authored with Sarah Cave, is a series
of “21 Annunciations,” using the same source-event, but presented in wholly
different ways.
There
is no indication of which poems are penned by which poet, or if they are all
collaborations. This is interesting to me, because I recently reviewed another
book of poetry, Blue, by Wesley St.
Jo and Remé Grefalda that did not indicate which poet contributed where.
The
annunciations in Impossible Songs are
refracted through a wide array of prisms. “A Polar Bear Annunciation of Self”
is a first-person poem from the polar bear’s point of view, interdicted with
narrative from Barry Lopez, the environmental/humanitarian writer. This poem is
followed by another with an Arctic theme. In the third stanza I was struck by
an echo from the poem “Bright Flags” by Jim Morrison, wherein he says “There’s
a belief by the/Children of Man which states/all will be well.” In the
Cave/Loydell poem “Shadow Words,” the line is “she convinces herself/all will
be will be well.” This would seem reviewer-centric if it were not for a poem
several pages later, “The Impossible Song,” which quotes Morrison in its
epigraph and then begins:
“The
voice of the serpent/slid into my ear, creaking/leather and snakeskin/black
boots aslant…”
and
ends:
“dead
in the bath,/a drowned angel/who lost his voice”
This
poem is preceded by a poem “for Leonard Cohen” and followed by a poem called
“An Annunciation of Christ’s Dark Matter” “after David Bowie.” This poem
contains lines from “Ashes to Ashes” (“strung out in heaven’s high”) and other
Bowie tunes and is darkly evocative, as Bowie so often was.
We
now have as inspiration a triumvirate of dead songwriters who were all also
poets. A few pages later there is a poem called “Tightrope Annunciation.”
Perhaps this truly is tenuous and reviewer-centric but there is a song on Other Voices, the album recorded by the
three remaining Doors after Morrison’s death, called “Tightrope Ride.”
Loydell
is a painter as well as a poet, so it is no surprise that some of the
annunciations are based on paintings, such as Edward Hopper’s Cape Cod Morning. The cover art is a
study of Fra Angelico’s Annunciation.
“The
Art of Silence” is three poems in one. The two columns can be read as
individual poems or the lines can be read straight across to make one poem.
“The
Deserted Garden” considers the first mother, Eve, who was pregnant, before Cain
and Abel, with knowledge.
One
of my favorite poems in Dear Mary is
about annunciation as alien abduction. Impossible
Songs contains a similarly themed poem titled “annunCIAtion,” which
presents Mary’s experience as conspiracy theory. There are several theories
therein of how she was impregnated (to which I add Roman centurion) and there
is even a visit by the “men in black” (“secret agents or aliens”). Could the
Pharisees and Sadducees been among their number? Or was it an infiltration?
“Notes
on an Almost Annunciation” brings to mind Mary Lee Wile’s powerful novel Ancient Rage. While Mary and Jesus were
made so much of, there was also Mary’s cousin Elizabeth and her son John the
Baptist, who suffered much the same but didn’t quite get the press.
For
readers who, like me, find added value in an artist coming back to subject
matter again and again over time, especially when it is a single line or other
form of bread crumb, the final line of the final poem in Impossible Songs is “The God-duck wore his Mitre at an angle in
church on Sunday.” This line echoes back to a chapbook edited by Loydell titled
The Gospel According to Archbishop
Makeshift.
Speaking
of chapbooks, along with Impossible Songs
I received several quarter-fold chapbooks. Two in particular bear mention in
the context of this review. They are point–counterpoint collaborations between
Loydell and Peter Gillies and are titled “The Angel Gabriel is not Your
Friend/The Angel Gabriel could be Your Cousin” and “Fra Angelico is not Your
Friend/Fra Angelico could be Your Cousin.”
As
evidenced by these three works, Loydell is mining themes that resonate with our
times, leading to collaborations with a talented array of fellow poets,
allowing for a synergistic pulse of varied views. He and his fellow travelers
ask difficult questions and offer open-ended answers through the time-tested
holy triad of ethos, logos, and pathos.
The
grey space of possibility is one that more artists should commit to create in.
