David Jacobs
Review
For the Moment, John Mole, Peterloo Poets £7.95
John Mole is both fascinated and frustrated by life’s imperfections, and a sizable part of his latest fine collection explores difficulties between couples, why they don’t work out and wishes, passionately, that they should.
In ‘Couples’, the narrator watches from the edge of the dance floor a couple “at ease with one another”, how “he’d light a cigarette/ taking his time over it/ and fill her empty glass..” Verging on self-pity he confesses how all he can think of “was what being in love/ like that might do, and having/ a girl of my choice to bring/ then take the long way home...”
But Mole is far from confining himself to therapy. He attempts to make the death of Tommy Cooper on stage into a kind of ideal package: “So that when he died/ it seemed the perfection of his act/ in exquisite slow-motion, a long slide/ into himself, such absolute control.
Some of Mole’s best poems demonstrate a talent in conveying simple, everyday occurrences, atmospherically. ‘High Summer’ was one of my favourites when a night walk in summer with a loved one throbs with the significance of small actions and shows an unashamed romantic at work:
My hand slips down
to lace our fingers
while so much to come
is haunting here
between my footsteps
and the pattern of your dress.
Page(s) 89
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