Analogy and Myth
Nov. 19th, 2024 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidkmKernaghan, Eileen, 2009, Tales from the holograph woods, speculative poems, Wattle and daub books, Grandview RPO, P.O. Box 78038, Vancouver Canada V5N 5W1, wattleanddaubbooks.ca, perfect bound paperback, ISBN 978-0981-0658, cover painting "On the forest edge" by Henri Rousseau.I do not see a price on the book, but the website lists it at $12.95. Presumably that is Canadian dollars.
I first encountered Kernaghan's work when she submitted a beautiful story called "Dragon-rain" to an anthology (Magic) that my daughter Morgan and I published in 1995. The story is the last one in the book and, if I remember correctly, it received an honorable mention in the Year's best fantasy and horror. I wonder if she sent me this book to review on the strength of that prior connection.
Be that as it may, I was delighted to receive it. Tales from the holograph woods is a slim volume containing 42 poems in four groups: "The dark gardens of the zodiac," "A dance in four dimensions," "Spells and ancient gramaries," and "Out of the midnight forest." There are also two framing poems that are not included in any of the four groups. The acknowledgments page is ambiguous, but appears to imply that all of these poems have been previously published elsewhere, including one in Dreams and Nightmares, long ago.
The first poem, "The dream," sets a tone of reverence, carries a weight of myth, and is meant to be read slowly, or so it strikes me. It's an appropriate beginning for a book full of such poems.
The next poem, "Re-Incarnate," includes the phrase "the dark garden of the zodiac," from which the first section of the book takes its title. It's funny, but the last four lines of this poem appeared overleaf from the main part. And I kind of think the poem is stronger if you stop at the bottom of the page.
I really like this part of the next poem, "In Turing's garden."
In dim undergrowth
the stirring
of vast ambiguous animals
And isn't that exactly the kind of thing we will face when we apply the Turing Test to things we encounter off world or in the lab? I'm really not sure what dark gardens of the zodiac are, because several of the poems in this section are unequivocally science-fiction poems. Then again, they do have a mythic feel. Science, myth, and magic are commingled by Kernaghan in many of these poems. Another example, from "Deus ex machina"
This is the final garden,
the place of logical exhaustion
where time narrows to the last trickle
in a dried-out bed.
Here, she uses a literary term to link the writing process to the cosmos in terms both mathematical (elsewhere in the poem) and mystical, leaving us to wonder whether she is really writing about gardens out in the universe or gardens inside our heads. Or possibly descibing a relationship between mental and physical worlds.
In the next section of the book, "A dance in four dimensions," most of the poems have some explicit reference to dance, although the references are used differently. Dimensions more than four could express the different aspects of dance presented within this suite of poems. Some of the poems also refer fairly explicitly to dimensionality.
From "The idea of order in a Chinese landscape"
The Emperor of China
kneeling at the still pivot of the universe
designs one small pavilion
to hang halfway between the earth and heaven
My favorite in this section is "Broken syllables," in which translations of remnants of ancient Sumerian poems are used to express the inexorable effect of time on human endeavor. Yet the fragments retain their own beauty and power; illustrating another aspect of dimensionality.
Part three of the book isn't really about spells, or at least it is not mostly about spells. It could just as well be said to be about dream, because almost every poem in this section refers to dream or is about a dream. A few of them mention spells or actually are about spells, but to my mind the title of the section is the most opaque of the four.
I feel on my throat
your insubstantial touch,
your chill sweet breath.
would seem a reference to a dream even if the poem didn't say so two lines later. (The Poet-Chansonnier's song from Wild Talent).
By contrast, in "Out of the midnight forest," if the poems don't all refer to midnight, or forests, or both, they all have a darkness about them that is reminiscent of midnight and midnight doings. Anyway, the names of the four sections of this book are taken from lines in the contained poems. By now it's clear they don't necessarily encapsulate the meaning of all poems found therein. Please don't mistake all my wondering about why this was titled as it was and why that was not titled in a different way as intended criticism. This is a wonderful book and I think you need to read it. After you do, it will probably stick with you. From "Wild things"
out of the midnight forest
they follow you home like shadow
they live in your walls and rafters
in forgotten backs of cupboards
you know their shapes
but will not name them.
I first encountered Kernaghan's work when she submitted a beautiful story called "Dragon-rain" to an anthology (Magic) that my daughter Morgan and I published in 1995. The story is the last one in the book and, if I remember correctly, it received an honorable mention in the Year's best fantasy and horror. I wonder if she sent me this book to review on the strength of that prior connection.
Be that as it may, I was delighted to receive it. Tales from the holograph woods is a slim volume containing 42 poems in four groups: "The dark gardens of the zodiac," "A dance in four dimensions," "Spells and ancient gramaries," and "Out of the midnight forest." There are also two framing poems that are not included in any of the four groups. The acknowledgments page is ambiguous, but appears to imply that all of these poems have been previously published elsewhere, including one in Dreams and Nightmares, long ago.
The first poem, "The dream," sets a tone of reverence, carries a weight of myth, and is meant to be read slowly, or so it strikes me. It's an appropriate beginning for a book full of such poems.
The next poem, "Re-Incarnate," includes the phrase "the dark garden of the zodiac," from which the first section of the book takes its title. It's funny, but the last four lines of this poem appeared overleaf from the main part. And I kind of think the poem is stronger if you stop at the bottom of the page.
I really like this part of the next poem, "In Turing's garden."
In dim undergrowth
the stirring
of vast ambiguous animals
And isn't that exactly the kind of thing we will face when we apply the Turing Test to things we encounter off world or in the lab? I'm really not sure what dark gardens of the zodiac are, because several of the poems in this section are unequivocally science-fiction poems. Then again, they do have a mythic feel. Science, myth, and magic are commingled by Kernaghan in many of these poems. Another example, from "Deus ex machina"
This is the final garden,
the place of logical exhaustion
where time narrows to the last trickle
in a dried-out bed.
Here, she uses a literary term to link the writing process to the cosmos in terms both mathematical (elsewhere in the poem) and mystical, leaving us to wonder whether she is really writing about gardens out in the universe or gardens inside our heads. Or possibly descibing a relationship between mental and physical worlds.
In the next section of the book, "A dance in four dimensions," most of the poems have some explicit reference to dance, although the references are used differently. Dimensions more than four could express the different aspects of dance presented within this suite of poems. Some of the poems also refer fairly explicitly to dimensionality.
From "The idea of order in a Chinese landscape"
The Emperor of China
kneeling at the still pivot of the universe
designs one small pavilion
to hang halfway between the earth and heaven
My favorite in this section is "Broken syllables," in which translations of remnants of ancient Sumerian poems are used to express the inexorable effect of time on human endeavor. Yet the fragments retain their own beauty and power; illustrating another aspect of dimensionality.
Part three of the book isn't really about spells, or at least it is not mostly about spells. It could just as well be said to be about dream, because almost every poem in this section refers to dream or is about a dream. A few of them mention spells or actually are about spells, but to my mind the title of the section is the most opaque of the four.
I feel on my throat
your insubstantial touch,
your chill sweet breath.
would seem a reference to a dream even if the poem didn't say so two lines later. (The Poet-Chansonnier's song from Wild Talent).
By contrast, in "Out of the midnight forest," if the poems don't all refer to midnight, or forests, or both, they all have a darkness about them that is reminiscent of midnight and midnight doings. Anyway, the names of the four sections of this book are taken from lines in the contained poems. By now it's clear they don't necessarily encapsulate the meaning of all poems found therein. Please don't mistake all my wondering about why this was titled as it was and why that was not titled in a different way as intended criticism. This is a wonderful book and I think you need to read it. After you do, it will probably stick with you. From "Wild things"
out of the midnight forest
they follow you home like shadow
they live in your walls and rafters
in forgotten backs of cupboards
you know their shapes
but will not name them.
