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gorecki's review
4.0
This is a book of poems. Of invocations and summoning. Of prayers to and within nature. Of raising trees from words, many trees, and then kneeling under them ready to pray or beg or praise.
“Later still, the baby would not latch,
and I came back to this holly, unhardened
by the sun, unable to turn the light
into strength. May it keep its whiteness,
may it never learn the use of spikes;
or, in time, when a crown is made of it,
may the people approach one by one
to witness how a fragile thing is raised.”
“But then, in each of us, a wound must be made
or given - there is always the soul waiting
at the door of the body, asking to be let out.”
And there really is a lot of soul-letting here, in the invoked images and in the space left between the lines for rapid gulps of air. With his poems, Seán Hewitt creates a forest and then lets it speak its own verses about everything it witnesses: pain inflicted on oneself and others, love, both physical and in the heart, and spells to bind them all together.
“Later still, the baby would not latch,
and I came back to this holly, unhardened
by the sun, unable to turn the light
into strength. May it keep its whiteness,
may it never learn the use of spikes;
or, in time, when a crown is made of it,
may the people approach one by one
to witness how a fragile thing is raised.”
“But then, in each of us, a wound must be made
or given - there is always the soul waiting
at the door of the body, asking to be let out.”
And there really is a lot of soul-letting here, in the invoked images and in the space left between the lines for rapid gulps of air. With his poems, Seán Hewitt creates a forest and then lets it speak its own verses about everything it witnesses: pain inflicted on oneself and others, love, both physical and in the heart, and spells to bind them all together.
fjcookie's review
4.5
good god this is amazing
'leaf'
'leaf'
- "For how each leaf traps light as it falls.// For even in the nighttime of life/ it is worth living, just to hold it"
'Dryad'- GAY!
- "I wonder if I have ruined/ these places for myself, if I have brought/ each secret to them and weighed the trees// with things I can no longer bear"
- "what is a tree, or a plant, if not an act/ of kneeling to the earth"
'kyrie'
- 'I have found myself at a place/ so close to life, to its truth of violence"
- 'what is a print to a child but a god// who we turn to when we still believe/ that everything is fixable'
- 'the places where words extinguish/ themselves and leave all the things/ that cannot be fixed or forgotten.'
'St John's Wort'
- 'Bearing no gift, I took your head/ in my empty hands like a world and held it.'
'Wild Garlic'
- 'the world is dark/ but the wood is full of stars.'
'Evening Poem'
- 'the garden is re-assembling,/ calling its sparrows home'
- 'I am teaching myself again to bear it'
'moor'
- 'speaks rain and sudden light'
- 'wants every night to reach up/ and swallow the moon, swallow something// is a mouth'
'Ilex'
- 'may the people approach one by one/ to witness how a fragile thing is raised.'
'Epithalamium'
- 'I did not// realise how far I had walked you/ into my life, until your hand let go.'
'Petition'
- 'Are we all/ just wanting to see ourselves/ changed, made unearthly?'
- 'I came here to see myself shattered/ and remade, if only to show myself/ that it is possible'
'Tree of Jesse'
- 'its ebbing shape, slivering out/ and then sliding back into its bright/ circle, its restless life.'
- 'Those who we love, and who die, become gods to us.'
- 'I felt in that moment/ the privilege of being alive/ in your mind, to have been remade// beyond myself and beamed out'
- 'You are not leaving, I know,// but shifting into image- my head/ already is haunted with you.'
'tongues of fire'
- 'where// he has chosen to speak,/ or where I have chosen to hear him speaking,/ where I have conjured meaning// when I have needed'
ophelia_so_sad's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
rachelandrews's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
5.0
literatureaesthetic's review
3.0
Wow. This is a collection of stunning poetry, and every poem sung to me. I loved how every poem was linked in some way to nature, the reoccurring theme of nature permeates the collection and I think it's beautiful. I found that the poems about the author's personal experiences were extremely moving, they were generally my favourites. It's an amazing poetry collection, written by an author who has exceptional writing skills.
foggy_rosamund's review
4.0
Full of lyric meditations on nature, as well as explorations of loss, despair and sexuality, this is a memorable debut. Sean Hewitt has a gift for evoking the beauty and subtlety of nature, such as the bark of an oak tree, or the colours and shapes of a fungus. He also translates sections from the Medieval Irish poem, Buile Suibhne, previously translated by Heaney, which is itself a poem that describes the ever-changing natural world, as well as the ways in which madness can be soothed, and reflected, by nature. Hewitt has a gift for using an image of the natural world to explore a personal grief or moment of deep emotion, such as in Kyrie, in which "the darker shapes of two cats / mating" bring him to a moment "so close to life, to its truth of violence / that my mind has wired out" and he goes on describe how, in moments of profound pain or fear, we continue to long for our parents, "what is a parent to a child but a god". In Adoration, one of my favourite poems in the collection, Hewitt also draws on the colours and changes of the natural world: " a gold / lobe on the oak, leaking // in the mist", which brings him to memories of a club in Berlin, "its vaulted columns, the steel bars / and long-stemmed lilies, and the heat / scouring our skin." Here, the author is brought to a place of life, where "bloom and spirit [are] unspooling". Like nature, this place of sexuality and lust, brings the narrator to a place "soft and secret and unseen". In the same stanza, the narrator admits "I knew / I would kneel to you - blood, yes, / spine, lips." Hewitt travels a great distance in this poem, between moments within a relationship, as well as between countries -- Ireland, Berlin -- and places -- a club, a road, a heath -- and times -- summer, winter -- but remains in control. The poem carries us through tensions of love and lust, to the tartness of a blackberry, and to a place of contemplation, and, yes, adoration. There is something so moving about the narrator admitting, "I would kneel to you": an acceptance of how devotion makes us vulnerable.
At his best, Hewitt travels far within his work and explores the world with originality and depth. Some poems were not so successful, I found, because Hewitt sacrifices the rawness and messiness of emotions and bodies in order to create a poem that is aesthetically beautiful. There were places, particularly as Hewitt describes grief at the loss of a father, where the poems didn't convey the weight and intensity of pain. However, this is an impressive first collection, and one that I would recommend.
At his best, Hewitt travels far within his work and explores the world with originality and depth. Some poems were not so successful, I found, because Hewitt sacrifices the rawness and messiness of emotions and bodies in order to create a poem that is aesthetically beautiful. There were places, particularly as Hewitt describes grief at the loss of a father, where the poems didn't convey the weight and intensity of pain. However, this is an impressive first collection, and one that I would recommend.