I'm
not in the habit of reviewing older titles, but, after ordering VesnaGoldsworthy's The Angel of Salonika
(©
2011
Salt Publishing/winner of the Crashaw Prize), I'm happy to report
that my decision to read, and then review this gorgeous little poetry
volume was the correct one.
Goldsworthy,
a Serbian poet who grew up in communist Yugoslavia, and, later,
emigrated to London, has captured and chronicled the themes of love,
loss, memory, and rediscovery that originated from a summer spent in
Greek Macedonia (“Salonika” is an ancient name for Thessaloniki),
thirty years previous.
Salonika,
as Goldsworthy notes in her
afterward, is a cultural gateway to The Balkans; this is the perfect
backdrop for Goldsworthy to set up a dual travelogue; the
outward landscape mirrors the poet's internal journey. The poet is
often in the act of departing for other places (“Departure Board,”
“Germany”) or, saying farewell to a loved one/times past
(“Notebooks,” “Yugoslav Noctures”). The best poems, in my
opinion, are the ones where Goldsworthy engages in the act of
transformation; her own, while at the same time, acknowledges the
transformations of those persons in her life who no longer fit the
familiar boundaries the mind employs to solidify relationships, as in
the poem, “He Stands so Thin and Waits”:
I
take my spectacles off
Before
the ink line of his limbs
Emerge
from the crowd
Before
the smile closes his eyes
Below
the clock at Waterloo
Half
way between
A
Giacometti and a Meissen Chinaman
He
stands so thin and waits
Yet
I am the fragile, the much sutured one
This
time, shall we...
His
question bleeds
Into
the departure
Of
the one forty two
For
fear of being early
I
am the one who is late
Who
takes the last few steps
Like
someone who hasn't walked before
But
how are you, I ask
And
hold his hand for a moment
In
what I hope feels like a handshake
We
do not touch
Thereafter
We
do not touch
©
2011 Vesna Goldsworthy
I'm
not often bowled over by a poet's use of language (in this case,
English) that's not written in their native tongue. Oftentimes, poets
for whom English is not their native language rely on the help of
translators, or, spend a great deal of time carefully constructing
poems that are burdened with layers of scholarly formalism. That
can't be said of Salonika. Goldsworthy
has transformed the guttural soul of English into something finer,
more lovely than English has a right to be, yet, her poetry is
immediate and accessible, as in the poem “Out of the Blue”:
I
remember
My
father's kiss
A
drop of wax on my
Left
shoulder
A
feather
Floating
away
Somewhere
to the side
The
light
Over
the archipelago
You
get too close
Even
so cautiously
That
is
The
secret of entropy
The
sky and the makeshift
Miracles
In
it
All
Irreversible
©
2011 Vesna Goldsworthy
The Angel of Salonika, as a
travelogue, and as a first collection of poems written in English by
Vesna Goldsworthy, deserves a permanent place on every reader's
shelf.
The
Angel of Salonika,
©
2011 Vesna Goldsworthy, Salt Publishing, www.saltpublishing.com,
ISBN 97818448788, Hardcover, 64 pages, £12.99
($20.13 US).
article
content ©
2013 Marie Lecrivain
poems
©
2011 Vesna Goldsworthy
