Scan barcode
A review by foggy_rosamund
Tongues of Fire by Seán Hewitt
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.