Mathematics and Other Poems by William Wall Collins Press 71pp, £6.99
Impediments by Adrian Rice Abbey Press 30pp (no price given)
Not on the Map by Kevin Bowen and Bruce Weigl Dedalus 32pp, £4.95
Despite the title of William Wall's collection, Mathematics & Other Poems, the poems in the book are quite traditional in theme and treatment. They employ the language of mathematics in the manner in which the Baroque poets used the science and specialist knowledge of their time, as metaphors of novelty and decoration in the treatment of the old verities of love and friendship, birth and death. Here, for example, is Wall's description of snow:
The number of the ice crystals is 6
the hard-edged, hard nosed hexagon.
But the language of ice is domestic -
needles & flakes & blankets.
All the prismatic clarity of numeral
culminates in the snow-verb
to flocculate & then we have snow.
("the number of ice")
But there is a personal tone to Wall's poems that lends them an intimacy which successfully avoids mawkishness with an assured restraint and even elegance:
The jets fly over our house at night,
three lights, heeled slightly to the east,
& the noise of movement follows them
briefly into the stars.
Sometimes we hold hands on the garden-seat
like victorian lovers waiting for an eclipse
for privacy, psychologists of air, trembling
at every windchange.
("Radiance")
Wall's poetry is technically accomplished (I suspect he has learnt a good deal from John Montague). Less craft and more experiment, however, would, in my opinion, make him a more exciting poet.
Adrian Rice is best known for his collaboration with the artist Ross Wilson in The Muck Box, which I have not seen; and indeed the trouble I have with this present small collection, Impediments, is that there is not enough in it to enable me to make a reasonable assessment of Rice's talent. That said, I found the poems clear land articulate.
Rice was born in Belfast in 1958, and the "troubles" there are never far from his mind. He knows radical change is inevitably on the way in Northern Ireland and he is puzzled by possible resulting scenarios.
We are Protestant Christians from Ulster
Not creedless, countrlyless creatures.
Our inheritance is Protestant . . . is scriptural . . .
Is Protestant . . . is straight-forward and simple.
We've run over time. I take it that's ample.
("Handing Over The Reins")
Kevin Bowen and Bruce Weigl share a deep interest in Vietnam, and that interest permeates their poems in this small collection Not On The Map. Taken together (and strangely enough both poets have an extraordinarily uniformity of tone), Bowen and Weigl have constructed a kind of reparation for the atrocities committed by the Americans against the Vietnamese people. The form that reparation takes in this poem is the expression and celebration of the ordinary Vietnamese, their culture and their country. Dedalus is to be congratulated on this cross-Atlantic venture.
You never thought it would come to this,
that afternoon in the war
when you leaned so hard into the controls
you became part of the landscape:
just you, the old man, old woman
and their buffalo.
("Playing Basketball With The Viet Cong" by Kevin Bowen)
Duc Thanh brought me three fish he had caught in the small lake on Nguyen Du.
They were the colour of pearls;
they were delicate and thin.
Already
winter was in the wind from China,
voices of ancestors on swans' wings.
("Three Fish" by Bruce Weigl)
Michael Smith is a poet, publisher and translator