Naked Light -- Village of Stones

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Village of Stones
Selected poetry of Brian Lee - the book

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£5.99

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Reviews & Letters

Village of Stones: Selected poetry by Brian Lee

London: Naked Light, 2007.

Reviewed by: Ian Dieffenthaller

Brian Lee’s "stones" are latter-day flints, honed and sharpened, purposefully wielded to whittle away at the mind. The resulting lines are compact but the poems themselves skip along, aided by enjambment and countless figures of repetition - but not rhyme. It is anaphora in the opening poem that strikes the reader ("come from the mountains...come from an island... come from everywhere..."), and again in the next but bolstered this time by listing. There is little punctuation and capitals rarely perform the function we ascribe to them in ordinary life: occasionally they signal an end-stopped line but their general placement seems to be in touch with the poet’s stream of consciousness.

This thoroughly modernist approach to things imparts a restlessness to the whole collection - a conscious striving for the missing connexion that at last seems to manifest itself in the title poem when stone becomes life and life transformed enters a new world:

upon this cloth of earth
where earth has laid us
where our words are spoken
heard and understood

when we are ready to begin again our journey
to flow as liquid in the heat of her embrace,
to evaporate and end all separation,
to fuse again as plasma,
core to core

then slowly to condense somewhere,
another job,
another world

Like his poems, Lee’s quest is not as unstructured as his array of technical devices might imply. There is a question and answer format in the early work, in poems such as “Where to come from” and “What would you like to hear?” and the journey builds on each successive answer. Come from everywhere so as to deflect hurtful words back at those who utter them. But look into your own mind to find yourself rather than in phonebooks, or supermarkets or other people’s descriptions.

The book contains love poems and verses in memoriam and ventures into indigenous cultures in order to fulfil the restless spirit encountered in the opening poem. Often, there is a sense of eavesdropping on a private conversation or being caught up in a folk tale but always an insistence that what the reader is experiencing is a poem. Indeed, the author makes a point of offering something back to the reader in the form of the best poem he can write. In the affecting “I have sent you a poem” he has composed a poem about roots - imaginary animals in the land of his grandmother, about dreams - stars moving about and conversing - “like at a party” - and about everyday life - “standing/ on long train journeys / because there is nowhere to sit.” But we are aware before the final confirmation that

It is a love poem
I hope you like it

Anything is possible in the village of the word. Lee appropriates the Hebrew expression tohu va bohu (unformed and unfilled) - used in Genesis 1:2 to describe the chaos before God said that there should be light - and in creating a pair of contemporary jazz musicians from the words, uses them as a means of delivering night out of day. As a modern version of God’s spirit hovering over water, jazz music rises like smoke out of the diminishing night.

Lee’s surrealist bent is triggered by the ordinary, for instance the drunk on Kilburn Bridge, or the dinning of a television. And the ordinary is often punctuated by a single loaded image: in “a long limbed African woman” the subject drops her bag of groceries in hurrying through the pouring rain, her dreams of home only being reclaimed in the final refrain “oh mother, dear mother / don’t cry we still love you.” If there are echoes of William Carlos Williams’s plums in “I have sent you a poem,” I perceived D H Lawrence’s Self Pity in “fingers of cloud” which apparently about everyday loss, turns on the final line, “revenge is breeding,” confirming for the reader that the poem is much more than a landscape sketch. The poem “Photographing the moon” has seven lines beginning:

I tried to photograph the moon
but the picture came out blurred
maybe the moon moved

all of which works fine in the context of a moon poem. But sentiment turns on the slightly unexpected central line “or maybe the earth turned.” The poet is unable to say how beautiful the moon is finally, not because of the moonswerve but because of some other earthly consideration about which we are left to ponder.

These little poems put me in mind of the Imagists of the early twentieth century and via T. S. Eliot to the West Indian Kamau Brathwaite. Their impressionistic quality might equally lead readers to find connexions with Turner’s eighteenth century sketches or the impressions of the late nineteenth century French painters. In the same way that this disparate band of artists came to called the painters of modern life, so it is that Lee paints contemporary society - deftly and with measured words. The collection gives the impression of journeying but not in the epic sense of many “travelling” poets. In the poem “travellin’” for instance the narrator asks us to pack our alembic and our four winds, “we’re going for a ride.” The alchemy alluded to in the flask is in searching out the little details in life and making them into memory.

This type of searching asks us to envisage a constant rebalancing of things and places, languages and cultures in a world village. The Village of Stones is ultimately a transformative place in the mind of a poet whose bearing of poems as gifts is much to be welcomed in such straitened times.

6 March 2009.

Reviewed by Victoria Earle

(The review that Caduceus didn’t print!)

An anthology from shamanic poet Brian Lee, who infuses his love of the natural and mystical worlds with poems about personal history, passion and perplexity. Here he has distilled 20 years of writing into this sparse but rich collection, published in both written and spoken form.

Lee is excellent at capturing that sense of being in the world but not of the world. The poem I Have Barely Learned to Speak describes this sense of duality:

I have barely learned to speak
I cannot say thank you
or please
nor ask for my needs
I have barely learned to say "cheers"
when my glass is struck

But I have my drum
and my back warm to the fire
and arms holding me

Elsewhere Lee uses humour to describe the awkward gap between spiritual aspiration and day to day experiences, as in Senryu (meaning silly haiku in Japanese):

Out on my bicycle
searching for enlightenment
Aah! a puncture

His words inspire, comfort and challenge the reader all at once, reminding us that to live fully as human beings we must connect to the earth, to the moon, to rivers and stars. Through nature we can remember who we really are, not just a sum of thoughts and experiences but also, as he says in I Am A Dark Drum, 'a point of light echoing in an endless river'.

As with his work Songs for Gaia, this collection is also available as a CD featuring the vocals of Claudia Van Buren and the haunting flutes of Paul Cheneour.

Village of Stones

Your work is truly special and I know it's for real. Thank you so much for that. It made my day and I've by no means finished with it. I came upon line after line that I thought was really beautifully crafted and really worked. Fantastic. I'm wanting to get back into more abstract painting too and I think your poems will help me.

Luigina, Syros Greece

Please feel free to submit a review of this book .

________________________________________


	. . Village of Stones Selected poetry of Brian Lee - the book see larger image £5.99 Other ways of Ordering Reviews & Letters Village of Stones: Selected poetry by Brian Lee London: Naked Light, 2007. Reviewed by: Ian Dieffenthaller Brian Lee’s "stones" are latter-day flints, honed and sharpened, purposefully wielded to whittle away at the mind. The resulting lines are compact but the poems themselves skip along, aided by enjambment and countless figures of repetition - but not rhyme. It is anaphora in the opening poem that strikes the reader ("come from the mountains...come from an island... come from everywhere..."), and again in the next but bolstered this time by listing. There is little punctuation and capitals rarely perform the function we ascribe to them in ordinary life: occasionally they signal an end-stopped line but their general placement seems to be in touch with the poet’s stream of consciousness. This thoroughly modernist approach to things imparts a restlessness to the whole collection - a conscious striving for the missing connexion that at last seems to manifest itself in the title poem when stone becomes life and life transformed enters a new world: upon this cloth of earth where earth has laid us where our words are spoken heard and understood when we are ready to begin again our journey to flow as liquid in the heat of her embrace, to evaporate and end all separation, to fuse again as plasma, core to core then slowly to condense somewhere, another job, another world Like his poems, Lee’s quest is not as unstructured as his array of technical devices might imply. There is a question and answer format in the early work, in poems such as “Where to come from” and “What would you like to hear?” and the journey builds on each successive answer. Come from everywhere so as to deflect hurtful words back at those who utter them. But look into your own mind to find yourself rather than in phonebooks, or supermarkets or other people’s descriptions. The book contains love poems and verses in memoriam and ventures into indigenous cultures in order to fulfil the restless spirit encountered in the opening poem. Often, there is a sense of eavesdropping on a private conversation or being caught up in a folk tale but always an insistence that what the reader is experiencing is a poem. Indeed, the author makes a point of offering something back to the reader in the form of the best poem he can write. In the affecting “I have sent you a poem” he has composed a poem about roots - imaginary animals in the land of his grandmother, about dreams - stars moving about and conversing - “like at a party” - and about everyday life - “standing/ on long train journeys / because there is nowhere to sit.” But we are aware before the final confirmation that It is a love poem I hope you like it Anything is possible in the village of the word. Lee appropriates the Hebrew expression tohu va bohu (unformed and unfilled) - used in Genesis 1:2 to describe the chaos before God said that there should be light - and in creating a pair of contemporary jazz musicians from the words, uses them as a means of delivering night out of day. As a modern version of God’s spirit hovering over water, jazz music rises like smoke out of the diminishing night. Lee’s surrealist bent is triggered by the ordinary, for instance the drunk on Kilburn Bridge, or the dinning of a television. And the ordinary is often punctuated by a single loaded image: in “a long limbed African woman” the subject drops her bag of groceries in hurrying through the pouring rain, her dreams of home only being reclaimed in the final refrain “oh mother, dear mother / don’t cry we still love you.” If there are echoes of William Carlos Williams’s plums in “I have sent you a poem,” I perceived D H Lawrence’s Self Pity in “fingers of cloud” which apparently about everyday loss, turns on the final line, “revenge is breeding,” confirming for the reader that the poem is much more than a landscape sketch. The poem “Photographing the moon” has seven lines beginning: I tried to photograph the moon but the picture came out blurred maybe the moon moved all of which works fine in the context of a moon poem. But sentiment turns on the slightly unexpected central line “or maybe the earth turned.” The poet is unable to say how beautiful the moon is finally, not because of the moonswerve but because of some other earthly consideration about which we are left to ponder. These little poems put me in mind of the Imagists of the early twentieth century and via T. S. Eliot to the West Indian Kamau Brathwaite. Their impressionistic quality might equally lead readers to find connexions with Turner’s eighteenth century sketches or the impressions of the late nineteenth century French painters. In the same way that this disparate band of artists came to called the painters of modern life, so it is that Lee paints contemporary society - deftly and with measured words. The collection gives the impression of journeying but not in the epic sense of many “travelling” poets. In the poem “travellin’” for instance the narrator asks us to pack our alembic and our four winds, “we’re going for a ride.” The alchemy alluded to in the flask is in searching out the little details in life and making them into memory. This type of searching asks us to envisage a constant rebalancing of things and places, languages and cultures in a world village. The Village of Stones is ultimately a transformative place in the mind of a poet whose bearing of poems as gifts is much to be welcomed in such straitened times. 6 March 2009. Reviewed by Victoria Earle (The review that Caduceus didn’t print!) An anthology from shamanic poet Brian Lee, who infuses his love of the natural and mystical worlds with poems about personal history, passion and perplexity. Here he has distilled 20 years of writing into this sparse but rich collection, published in both written and spoken form. Lee is excellent at capturing that sense of being in the world but not of the world. The poem I Have Barely Learned to Speak describes this sense of duality: I have barely learned to speak I cannot say thank you or please nor ask for my needs I have barely learned to say "cheers" when my glass is struck But I have my drum and my back warm to the fire and arms holding me Elsewhere Lee uses humour to describe the awkward gap between spiritual aspiration and day to day experiences, as in Senryu (meaning silly haiku in Japanese): Out on my bicycle searching for enlightenment Aah! a puncture His words inspire, comfort and challenge the reader all at once, reminding us that to live fully as human beings we must connect to the earth, to the moon, to rivers and stars. Through nature we can remember who we really are, not just a sum of thoughts and experiences but also, as he says in I Am A Dark Drum, 'a point of light echoing in an endless river'. As with his work Songs for Gaia, this collection is also available as a CD featuring the vocals of Claudia Van Buren and the haunting flutes of Paul Cheneour. Village of Stones Your work is truly special and I know it's for real. Thank you so much for that. It made my day and I've by no means finished with it. I came upon line after line that I thought was really beautifully crafted and really worked. Fantastic. I'm wanting to get back into more abstract painting too and I think your poems will help me. Luigina, Syros Greece Please feel free to submit a review of this book . ________________________________________