Sunday 4 February 2007

Take 1: Claire Crowther's Stretch of Closures

Were Claire not a dear friend of mine, I'd be warmly reviewing her first collection, Stretch of Closures. As she is one of my favourite people, I cannot ethically review it, but I still want to tell everyone what an intriguing, accomplished volume this is. In lieu of a review then, I'll be posting a number of poems from the collection (with her permission, of course). Enjoy!


Pollen

O Source du Possible, alimente à jamais
Des pollens des soleils d'exils . . .

Jules Laforgue, Complaint du Temps et de sa Commère L'Espace



Broken red slats of a blind horizon
hanging
behind a rope
suspended
between an oak and a concrete post in a clearing
light up a honey-green leaf of girl
fluttering
down the line. Once, boys grasped the handgrip and
launched
into a draft of unsure sky.
Such machinery of
grabbing,
diving,
falling
to the ground once made a cloud
of men, a storm that
rushed
in from a sea. The sun has no time
left for fire. A torch
drops
spots of gold, tiny as pollen grains.
The slats are
sheered
off from the sky, worn out.
She runs beneath them while they
fly down
again and again like rare Red Wakes.


Claire Crowther


(If you'd like to buy a copy and read the book entire, you can do so here for the UK, here for the US.)

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