Jane Holland reviews The Poem and the Journey by Ruth Padel

Ruth Padel’s The Poem and the Journey is a follow-on to her popular 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem. Divided into two parts, this new book provides an expansive and thoughtful Introduction on how to ‘read’ poetry, followed by sixty examples of this process drawn from a wide range of contemporary poems, some well-known, others not so. The overall structure of the book follows the meandering arc of a journey, and not just any journey, but the ultimate: the journey of life, with these sixty poems to accompany us. So the poems move thematically from our first tentative steps - perhaps a dream which nudges a reluctant traveller in the right direction - to that long-awaited rest at the end of our journey, otherwise known as death.

Padel has been an academic as well as a poet, and her erudition shows. The Introduction is fascinating and highly quotable, awash with sound-bites on poetry and superbly apposite quotations from the great and good: Coleridge, Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Armitage, the list goes on. Her readings of the poems which follow are scientific, almost clinical in approach. Each poet is briefly introduced, then the poem itself is dissected with varying degrees of intensity. Stress and rhythmical patterns are rigorously explored, themes suggested, adjectives scrutinised, verbs parsed and analysed: ‘The poem began with a passive past participle (condemned) and the passive past continues through the second stanza (sealed, closed)’ (John Burnside’s ‘The Old Gods’). Sometimes a definite conclusion can be reached via this method, sometimes not: ‘The point of this poem is not knowing precisely what happened. It is keeping everything open-ended, all possibilities in play’ (J.H. Prynne’s ‘The Holy City’).

I love some of her free-association moments in the Poems section, and those delicious revelations that close reading brings. On the downside, I find little left open to personal response, no creative gap in her analysis that might encourage untrained readers to use their own instincts as well as a fingertip search of the text. Padel paraphrases Wordsworth on this issue, claiming that ‘instinctive judgement may let you down’. She does seem aware of the need to experience poetry rather than simply explore it as an exercise in literary appreciation, insisting that ‘Part of a poem’s life is the personal connections each reader brings to it.’ Yet the tone of these readings is strongly academic, aimed at those already able to tackle poetry at this level; perfect for A-level and university students, in fact, or knowledgeable readers unfazed by Ciaran Carson apparently ‘yoking two registers’ as he ‘enjoys the sonority of palatable’ or by her observation that Ian Duhig’s consonants ‘stress the sinister words, weaving through ... to make each stanza a discrete soundworld on its own’.

Early in the Introduction, Padel is at pains to assure us ‘This is poetry, not maths.’ In noticeably accessible language, she puts forward a feng-shui approach to poetry: ‘In a room, you might notice a red cushion echoed by an off-red rug’ while in a poem, the reader notices ‘sounds which half-echo each other’. Then, possibly to defend herself against the criticism that her methods are over-prescriptive, Padel also claims not to be ‘sharing right answers, but offering a process.’

She admits that personal taste is a factor in this process: ‘There will always be poems you don’t like, however ‘good’ they are as poems.’ Padel herself tackles a broad swathe of poems in this selection with excellent sang-froid but her own tastes cannot be entirely concealed. Thus Padel on Geoffrey Hill’s ‘Mercian Hymns VI’: ‘The voice flings linguistic treasures down as if language itself were the gnarled mysterious landscape it describes.’ On Peter Reading: ‘His poems can look as rebarbative as a litter-strewn street.’ On free verse: ‘Structure is created, above all, by the poem’s movement.’ On bad poetry: ‘Words that do not mean are cellulite.’

In The Poem and the Journey, Padel interestingly describes poems as ‘portable altars’, with all the spiritual associations that brings. This is to underline their intimacy and small-scale appeal, condensing ‘the whole world in a little space’. To me, it also suggests something hurriedly unfolded at the roadside, of practical as much as spiritual use, never intended to be worshipped at with great ceremony and an HB pencil. One major poet not represented here, Ted Hughes, wrote of ‘the magic baggage old men open/And find useless, at the great moment of need’ (Gaudete). If we look to a poem for explanations, we are sure to find nothing but our own inadequacy. Confident in her method, Ruth Padel insists ‘Good poems can light a dark moment, give you something to hang on to.’ Taken along on the scenic but unpredictable journey through contemporary poetry, her book might achieve something similar for the right reader.

The Poem and the Journey, Chatto & Windus 2007, ISBN 978-0-701-17973-1.

The views expressed by contributors to the reviews section of Poetry Matters are not those of Tower Poetry, or of Christ Church, Oxford, and are solely those of the reviewers.