| Ruth Padel Reviews Impediments Adrian Rice Abbey Press 30 pp. �3.00 This is a tough book for an outsider brought up in London and Greece, whose Celtic heritage consists of one grandmother from the island of Bute, to review in responsible depth. As a poet, you register the artful but plain language. If Rice were a carpenter, he would keep to homegrown timbers. No veneer: everything well planed, dove-tailed, squared off underneath. Technically, the vowel-patterns, the organic way lines mesh into each other, the play and balance of words within a lone, and the movement through a poem, is solid and convincing; and lightening, sometimes surreal, self-subversive jokiness runs through the craft. In one poem the poet entrusts himself to a deaf barber who must "deliver a 'cut-above-the-rest' " or people gossip about him "at a club for the deaf". The barber explains this "in ear-splitting whispers": Rice is getting at the idea of sinisterly silent control in a social landscape, by mixing joky paradoxes of deafness and gossip with images of razors. But technique is technique: it's what you do with it that counts. Impediments uses art to spotlight and question the poet's Protestant background. Poetically and politically, this must be a daring step into untrodden territory. "Look in thy heart and write" is fine advice for an individual: but what if your heart is teeming with angst about a community that doesn't want to be written about? A central poem is "Handing Over the Reins": a Browningesque monologue by an evangelical pastor briefing someone to take over his church, and cagey about the Catholic converts: Be all things to all men to win some, But don't pander to cultural quirks or remnants Of prejudice lingering amongst adopted brethren. This is a deeply upsetting poem: The rigmarole of religion clings to them In spite of the bloodmark on their hearts. Through it, the poet questions the way politics tangle with faith: the Redeemed Will recognize Her Majesty the Queen. "We are", says the pastor, "Protestant Christians from Ulster" - and nuance is forbidden: Make clear what we stand for in these dark days - Black and white, not grey, in doctrine and practice. The voice gets fragmented and repetitive towards the end, as if Its belief in itself is running down: Our inheritance is Protestant � is scriptural � Is Protestant � is straightforward and simple. We've run over time. I take it that's ample? |
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