Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

This is the first full volume of this Romanian poet’s work to be published in this country and, coincidentally, it arrived on the day of Ceausescu’s arrest. With the media’s images of events still fresh in my mind I was almost expecting to find a poetry full of repression and poverty, expressed overtly, even though I was already familiar with her work.

     And yes, there are references which may be related to some pre-Revolution events,

Soon this old district
will have been completely demolished (Lights Underfoot)

and others which could be interpreted as forewarnings,

Perhaps as early as tomorrow a storm
will lift the lid off the box;
and then, don’t stay any longer
stuck between narrow walls

(In The Lift)

     Generally, her work creates its effect in a more covert manner. There is a sense of fear and uncertainty, often attached to the most ordinary events, but it is conveyed indirectly by an unusual and imaginative use of language. The poet creates an atmosphere of threat, of claustrophobia in which individuals are helpless, seeking a way out or a way to interpret the hostilities which lie behind the facade of the ‘everyday life’.

     At times she creates an eerie, sinister world behind the bright, familiar titles, such as, ‘The Wild Strawberry’ or ‘Butterfly and Candle’. In one poem, ‘Flowers of the Field’ the ‘flowers’ are test-tubes of blood carried ‘like a lighted candle’ and the poem concludes in a disturbing image,

This is surely a picture that must be saved:
a procession of poppies
through the long corridors,
advancing, invading - making no mistake
about how long they’ve got.

     Her writing is assured and offers fresh, provoking perceptions. The poems insist with subtlety and repay the efforts of re-reading.