Customer Reviews

Swithering

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Scottish poet Robertson has an amazing grasp of image and landscape, melding the two in page after page of arresting poems, as startling and spare as nature, yet glowing with life, a sensual pageantry that both charms and amazes:

The sea's a heavy sleeper,
dreaming in and out with a catch
in each breath, and is not disturbed...

Through the starting rain, the moon
skirrs across the sky dragging
torn shreds of cloud behind. ("What the Horses See at Night")

The title of the collection, Swithering, implies doubt or indecision. While the words find purchase in the constancy of nature, the shifting of emotions blends past and present, the choices taken, the loves lost, precious moments of ecstasy, each inscribed with a unique talent for the visual:

The child's skip
still there in the walk,
a woman's poise in her slow
examination
of the brightly coloured globe...

Is there anything
more heartbreaking than hope? ("Cusp)

Tackling subjects great and small, Robertson's longer works take on the themes of history, "The Death of Acteon", "Acteon: the Early Years", "Holding Proteus" and "Crossing the Archipelago". Between these poems are the small jewels of introspection that seem to flow so effortlessly from Robertson's pen:

I watch the day break down
over the lake: wind
looting the trees,
leaving paw-prints on the water
for the water-witch to read. ("The Lake at Dusk")

and...

White silk
in her hands...
drew me back
to another ocean,
another ravishing...

That moment,
When I found myself
Caught,
Felt myself
Being pulled in. ("Net")

From the first poem of this remarkable collection, "I found myself caught, felt myself pulled in" by the thoughtful arrangement of phrases that stir my soul and lead me to reflection. Luan Gaines/ 2006.

Harcourt must think they have the next Seamus Heaney, or better yet, Ted Hughes on their hands as they publicize Robertson with that New Yorker quote about "finding the sensually charged moment in a raked northern seascape." Good luck to them! Robertson has been shortlisted for the 2006 TS Eliot prize, so he doesn't need any advice from me, but if this is the best they are doing over there, then here in the USA we are achieving positive miracles in comparison.

I don't know about the Ted Hughes influence, but surely Rod McKuen must be big in the UK if Robertson's poem "Trysts" is any indication. "Meet me/ in your best shoes/ and your favourite dress/ meet me/ on your own, in the wilderness/ meet me/ as my lover, as my only friend." Remember that Rod Stewart song about, "You are my lover, you're my best friend, you're in my soul"? Of course you do, you've spent 20 years trying to forget it. Robin Robertson excels at delivering strong metaphors with just a tip of the hood. In "Cusp" he glimpses the future woman's sexuality in the innocent skipping of a little girl. "Is there anything/ more heartbreaking than hope?" he asks.

When tragedy strikes, he takes the stoic road. "I shoulder my pack and walk on." There are dramatic monologues describing situations in the life of the dramatist Strindberg. Takes you right there, they do. "With every word he wrote, his hands bled." The poems in SWITHERING seem to have been written at many fashionable writers colonies all over the map, and it was with a certain pang of anxiety that I pawed through the book, worrying that somehow I had missed what must be here--a poem celebrating the beauty of Tuscany. Over and over I flipped the book back and forth, and finally, right in front of my eyes, I found the poem about Tuscany.

The poem that will be an anthology piece is the Lawrentian "Asparagus," in which a close examination of the famous vegetable reveals its similarity to the phallus of a man,

"Pushing up, hard and fibrous/ from the ground, it is said to be/ grown for the mouth:/ steamed till supple/ so that the stem is still firm/ but with a slight give to gravity." There's more but I don't want to spoil the whole experience. In brief, this is a book for the ages, the crowning achievement of Robertson's career as a bard.

The definition of "swither" means to suffer indecision or doubt. Robin Robertson's book of poetry, Swithering consists of a broad range of subjects--and there is no indecision in any of the poems.

Robertson is an adventurer and invites the reader along on his journey of realization, acceptance and wonder of the world, how it's viewed and the experiences people live.

Robertson's imagery is at times raw and harsh, other times it is exquisitely lyrical and sometimes it is sad, filled with longing or acceptance of what is.

Whether Robertson is writing about children, childhood, death, or desire, he invites the reader to join him in experiencing the everyday world in a new way.

I must have read What the "Horses See at Night" a dozen times, I was so taken with the descriptive quality of his words. I read aloud "Heel of Bread" more so because of the visualization and the way the words fall off the tip of the tongue in such a pleasing manner. "New York Spring" is a spectacular piece. And "To My Daughters, Asleep" made my heart pound with its simple truth.

Armchair Interviews says: If you enjoy precise and succinct poetry that speaks to your heart, you would do well to read, read some more and then read Swithering again, It is a most satisfying journey about life.

Robertson's a good poet, but this book is padded out with poems by Neruda and Montale, as well as some close reworkings of Ovid. The end result feels not very original.