Recent Reading

As mentioned in a previous post - my latest fiction reading was The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds. This book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and the Guardian review piqued my interest, so I checked our library catalogue to find that as usual they did not let me down. (In fact, our library seems to be excellent at stocking all fiction nominated for various literary prizes - unfortunately when it comes to poetry, it's another matter entirely).

The Quickening Maze is based on historical characters - it deals with the period in the life of the poet John Clare when he was a patient in the asylum of Dr Matthew Allen, a man who had progressive notions on the treatment of mental illness. Alfred Tennyson also features in the book , bringing his brother Septimus for treatment.

It was the story line featuring the two poets that intrigued me from the review, but in the end the highlight for me was not so much that poets were featured, but that Foulds is himself a poet, and that it shows in the language. Sensitive descriptions abound, but it is always appropriate to the story, and he doesn't let words run away with him to the extent that it detracts from the flow of the story.

For example the patient Margaret is visited by an imagined angel:
There were feathers in the clearing, three of them, connected at their shafts, a scrap of torn wing. They stood on one edge, shuddering like the sail of a toy boat in the breeze. Around them the dark leaves and frail flowers of bluebells that glowed here and there where the sun struck through.
Margaret sat and heard the wind pouring in the leaves overhead. She had fallen in the river once, as a child, and heard the rushing deafness of drowning. But she had been saved. The flowing of the air around her seemed to intensify, to grow louder, until it was so powerful it reversed her breath. It almost lifted her from the ground.
The wind separated into thumps, into wing beats. An angel. An angel there in front of her. Tears fell like petals from her face.

Although it was the poetry connection that attracted me in the first place, what impressed me most was the handling of mental illness. Each of the patients is sensitively depicted, and each is quite unique, differing in their frailties and delusions from each other. It is not a long book, (unlike the eventual winner of the prize, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, but I found it a many-layered and satisfying one.

A Poetic Emporium

"H Pannell's boot emporium" - now a Thai restaurant



Johnson's grocery - a traditional style grocery with a wide range of specialty goods

I seem to have been spotting the word "emporium" everywhere lately ( and it has joined my "favourite words" list). On the inside flap of Michele Leggott's new poetry collection, Mirabile Dictu, she says
If the effect is of a kind of poetic emporium I would be very pleased, having learned that the word reached us through the Greek emporos , traveller or merchant, from poros , a journey, a porosity, passing from one thing to another.

It's not a book that is a quick and easy read. There is a lot crammed onto the shelves of these poems. Leggott does nothing to help the reader by way of footnotes or endnotes (I suspect that if she was inclined to such explanations, they would fill as many pages as the poems, at least). Additionally, there is no punctuation other than slightly larger than usual gaps between some of the words, one assumes to indicate a pause or breathing space.

In one poem for instance, she refers to the "sky-blue stick" which I understand to be the tokotoko or talking stick presented to her as Poet Laureate.

Te Kikorangi we could call it
almost as good as the blue from Kapiti
we eat when the good times roll

I recognise as referring to the Maori word for blue, which is also the name of a blue cheese made by the Kapiti cheese company - but how many more references pass me by unrecognised?

In the next poem, she begins
somewhere in Canada Sharon Thesen
is driving a car

and google tells me that Sharon Thesen is a Canadian poet, who presumably from the context of the poem, appeared at a literary festival in Wellington, which switches abruptly from Vancouver to Oriental Bay, and visits various locations around Wellington - Otaki, Island Bay, Red Rocks - before returning Sharon to Kelowna and Okanagan, while encompassing (among others) Lucy Jordan, Tamara de Lempicka, Eliza Hannay, Frances Boldereff, and Finnegans Wake. (Google them yourself, if you don't recognise them!)

Many of the poems have fragments in italics which I assume to be quotes, but again (without resorting to google), there is nothing to indicate who or what she is quoting. I'm not sure whether or not it detracts from the poems to miss half the references, as I'm sure I do.

These are poems better appreciated detail by detail than in their entirety. The overall effect at times can be a confused jumble, if taken too quickly. The endings are not particularly strong, leading to a "so what?" reaction at times, but as in Johnson's grocery, taken item by item, line by line, there is much to delight. It's a book I'll be trying to absorb for quite a while yet.

The Atheists Way

I've been a fan of Eric Maisel for quite a few years now. I have a number of his books on creativity, which I think are excellent (and which would serve me far better, no doubt, if I made the effort to put more of his ideas into practice).

I was interested in reading his new book "The Atheists Way" because his publicity material stated that it dealt with the necessity of making personal meaning. The subtitle of the book is "Living Well Without Gods". I found a good deal to think about in this book, which makes it difficult for me to review it adequately - however, I signed up to do so today, so I will do the best I can and perhaps I will have more to say in the future when I have had time to consider his themes more fully.

He certainly covers very well, the struggles that the creative person must go through, to make meaning in their life and to maintain motivation for whatever avenue their creativity might take.

I'm not so sure about some of his other statements. Maisel is, of course, an atheist, otherwise he wouldn't be writing this book. His publicity material says "unlike recent books on atheism, this one doesn't rail against religion..." Perhaps not. It does, however, make it quite clear that he thinks belief in anything supernatural, whether gods, "spirituality", or whatever you may call it, is deluded. His examples of making meaning suggest that he believes that religion leads to selfishness and to anti-humanism - for instance, believers may beat their children to teach them the "right" way to behave, or persecute homosexuals, or amass wealth and anticipate rewards in heaven. Atheists on the other hand,he seems to say, think carefully about ethical dilemmas and make reasoned decisions based on morals and values. He makes statements such as this:

"The simple proof that they (believers) get more depressed than atheists is that beievers comprise the vast majority of Americans; and antidepressants are the most prescribed drugs in America. Who but believers are taking all of those antidepressants?"

Well, I trained as a scientist, and I can't take an argument like that as "proof" at all. Perhaps many of those who claim to be believers really aren't. Perhaps believers and nonbelievers alike get depressed. Perhaps 90% of Americans are believers and are taking 85% of the antidepressants (which would still make the nonbelievers more depressed, even though the believers were taking most of the antidepressants). Without a proper scientific study, we just can't tell.

Personally, I know depressed believers, and I know depressed nonbelievers. Probably I know more depressed nonbelivers than depressed believers, but I don't know enough of either to make sweeping generalisations.

I do attend church, but whether I still believe in God I'm not sure. I know that science can't prove the existence of God, but neither can it disprove it. Just as an ant can't understand the complexity of a human being, there must be things in the universe that are too complex for us ever to understand. I certainly don't believe in the sort of God that Eric Maisel doesn't believe in. If I still believe in God, it is the God who asks his followers to love him "with all your mind" (and heart and soul and strength) which means that blind faith is not an option, and making one's own meaning is demanded of the believer as much as of the atheist, which makes this a valuable book.

Overall I think it is an exhilarating book, and that it is best to set aside the question of whether God exists or not, and set about making meaning in one's life in the way that Maisel discusses, and let belief, or lack of belief, take care of itself.

Eric is a great publicist of his work, and has adopted with enthusiasm the idea of the virtual book tour (One of the wonderful benefits of a virtual book tour is that it doesn't harm the environment).

If you are interested in learning more, there is a calendar at his website with links to other bloggers who are also reviewing the book. Visit the virtual book tour calendar here