BOOK REVIEW: What I’ve been reading recently

 Poems From Paintings by Jill Saudek

 

Published by Austin Macauley.

Available from Amazon - £3.50 (Kindle), £9.99 (print)

 

This is an excellent and entertaining collection of poems by a talented writer. The problem with poems written in response to existing paintings, of course, is that the expense of including prints of the actual paintings in the book itself is prohibitive, so readers are encouraged to look them up online. This is well worth doing, as the poems – though many stand up very well on their own – are definitely enhanced by the experience of seeing what inspired them. The result of viewing both picture and poem is that the reader’s understanding of both works is heightened.

Saudek’s writing makes use of elegant and vivid images. In her poem arising from Edvard Munch’s painting ‘Moonlight’ (1893), for example, she writes:

 ‘Now the posts seem stems of silver

  

  Their cut heads like the frail flowers which quiver

  

  Fearful, beneath the window’s guillotine’

Such magnificent comparisons more than make up for the occasional slightly creaky rhyme or the odd dip into something approaching cliché here and there. In such a large collection, such moments are forgivable and the reader is well-compensated by Saudek’s gift for imagery.

I was also struck by her sense of rhythm, enriched by a subtle use of alliteration and assonance:

                         ‘The salt dead sea, strewn with carcasses

                           The lowering hills of heat-struck rock, bare, barren,

                           Air becoming fire, terrible silences…’

                                         [Holman Hunt, ‘The Scapegoat’, 1855]

On the whole, she uses rhyme as a subtle scaffold for the verse, often making use of half-rhymes, embedding rhyming words in the middle of lines or eschewing any rigidly formal rhyming pattern in favour of a fluid system where the rhymes appear where they will. Saudek has an admirably light touch with rhyme, on the whole, something which I greatly admire. I think rhymes reach their greatest power when they are elusive, restrained and understated. Saudek is able to confidently use more obvious rhyme-schemes, however [as in Cezanne: Mont St Victoire, C 1905], and to use robust rhymes in a playful way [as in Van Gogh: The Bedroom at Arles, C 1889] – it might be that the paintings themselves, their styles and their subjects, lend themselves to different levels of control.

              In such a generous collection, there is bound to be some variation in quality from poem to poem, but I can say that I have read about two-thirds of the book now, often dipping in randomly, and so far I have seen no serious dilution anywhere. There are some stand-out poems, of course, and their identity will vary from reader to reader.

I understand that, before embarking on this work, Saudek wrote a series of poems based on other poems (which are also going to be published by Austin Macauley, I believe), and I expect these to be equally as delicious and enlightening as this current collection.

Varied, imaginative, often unusual, often poignant, often amusing, psychologically insightful and beautifully written, these poems are a satisfying cornucopia of work to dip into, and their accompanying paintings add an extra layer of delight for the reader.

 

Rating: ***** Highly recommended.