In my other life
I am the darling
of the High Renaissance
The opening lines of this poem would make a good choice for the poet’s tombstone. Motion is a poet out of time; an aesthetic callback to another time and another place. The achingly sincere romanticism of the Renaissance could not be out of tune with the irony-fueled rejection of honest emotion characterizing the society which has evolved throughout Motion’s lifetime.
The hawthorn has been cringing forward
like a seriously shy child who never meant
to be the subject of this or any photograph.
A child who in the space of a few yards grew
into an adult and lost control
More than one or two critics have noted that in his studied refusal to pay ritualistic allegiance to poetic structural element often results in verse that could easily be confused with prose. “Hawthorne” is an excellent example—by though means unusual—of that use of technique. The poem is constructed of four stanza that all look pretty much like this opening half of the second stanza. At heart, Motion is a writer of stories; his is the poetry of the narrative. What matters more than structure is content and, well, why shouldn’t it? Motion is a poet for those who hate poetry.
But you know The Wire,
everyone’s seen The Wire,
and let me tell you
when last week a traffic light
turned red in the middle of nowhere
my car was surrounded
before I could disappear.
Motion is also a poet for those who hate studying verse that relies on allusions to some obscure figure mentioned once in an ancient text credited to an author who may not even have ever existed. Not everyone is familiar with the TV show The Wire, of course and—equally significant—a few hundred years from now The Wire may well become an obscure allusion capable of confounding most people. But Motion is not really writing for the readers two-hundred years from now. Motion has enjoyed equally success as a poet and literary critic; thus he knows well enough the vagaries of popularity over time. His work is terrifically instructed material for writing to one’s own time even when they are a poet so manifestly out of step with their age.
I am downstairs early
looking for something to do
when I find my father on his knees
at the fireplace in the sitting room
sweeping ash
from around and beneath the grate
with the soft brown hand-brush
he keeps especially for this.
Poetry in Motion is the verse as narrative. He tells stories. Some stories are more oblique than others while a few such as easily become visual stories played out in the mind of the reader. Motion tends to shy away from that more ethereal “poetic” type of imagery that impresses as an example of literature, but too often leaves the reader bewildered. A quick skim of the opening lines of “Laying the Fire” is enough for all the most imaginative-impaired to see come to life in their mind’s eye as they continue. Later, the poem will get a bit more “artsy” as it grows more philosophically ponderous, but the imagery remains always concrete and firmly rooted in the real world staging exhibited here.
