Mirage and Echo Miriam Gamble edited by Michael Longley Robert Graves: Selected Poems London: Faber, 2013. 176 pp. £15.99. ISBN 978-0571283835 the action In the short essay ‘A Comparison’, Sylvia Plath defines garden-variety of lyric poems (‘the small, unofficial poem’) as being like what happens to the scene in a snow globe when the ornament is shaken: You turn it upside down, then back. It snows. Everything is changed in a minute. It will never be the same in there not – the fir trees, nor the gables, nor the faces. The disorientation and warping implicit in this statement along – with the doubled sense of sameness in difference perfectly – describes what happens in the characteristic Graves poem. In and the reader who seeks to judge ‘Ogres Pygmies’, for example, the a between ‘The thundering text, snivelling commentary’ enters and shrink hallucinogenic realm wherein ‘his own members bloat and pygmyish by turns. In again’, becoming ogreish ‘The Legs’, the globe is twice upended: first, by the disturbing assertion that most of us are being carted about by legs that, in the effort to hide their ‘senseless, frightening / Fate’ from themselves, dispense their time in in the going ‘Resolutely nowhere’; second, twist Graves performs on himself the one who stands – a remove from the ‘Entire’, at unreflecting ‘rout’: My head dizzied, then: I wondered suddenly, Might I too be a walker From the knees down?
Mirage and Echo Miriam Gamble Robert Graves: Selected Poems edited by Michael Longley London: Faber, 2013. 176 pp. £15.99. ISBN 978-0571283835 In the short essay ‘A Comparison’, Sylvia Plath defines the action of lyric poems (‘the small, unofficial garden-variety poem’) as being like what happens to the scene in a snow globe when the ornament is shaken: You turn it upside down, then back. It snows. Everything is changed in a minute. It will never be the same in there – not the fir trees, nor the gables, nor the faces. The disorientation and warping implicit in this statement – along with the doubled sense of sameness in difference – perfectly describes what happens in the characteristic Graves poem. In ‘Ogres and Pygmies’, for example, the reader who seeks to judge between ‘The thundering text, the snivelling commentary’ enters a hallucinogenic realm wherein ‘his own members bloat and shrink again’, becoming ogreish and pygmyish by turns. In ‘The Legs’, the globe is twice upended: first, by the disturbing assertion that most of us are being carted about by legs that, in the effort to hide their ‘senseless, frightening / Fate’ from themselves, dispense their time in going ‘Resolutely nowhere’; second, in the twist Graves performs on himself – the one who stands ‘Entire’, at a remove from the unreflecting ‘rout’: My head dizzied, then: I wondered suddenly, Might I too be a walker From the knees down?