Reviewing When We Were Slugs!

There are two things I don’t like about “When We Were Slugs,” the new collection of poetry by James Manlow, the former Bournemouth poet laureate. The first aversion is the cover, which seems to me a disaster, a stain. My second objection is the title, which is one of the poems, but which, while it may invite curiosity, has battic qualities. (That said, however, ‘When We Were Slugs’ is itself a good poem.) And now, having cleared my two objections, I would like to put on record the brilliant collection of poems that this volume represents.

What I especially like about him is the combination of technical mastery and genuine knowledge; If we add to this that the poems are written, to use Wordsworth’s hackneyed expression, the “language of men,” we have a very readable and relevant book. The book contains 24 poems, all good, but many excellent: “Sea Poem”, which starts the collection, “Marilyn”, “The Dressing”, “Dalilah”, “Entertainment the Dictator” (which is the most prominent poem of the entire collection), “Roots” and “The Year Gone”.

“Sea Poem” seems innocuous enough, but on examination a subtle sonnet structure is detected, but with many verses reduced to seven or more syllables; and there is a flexible use of parahymes: for example: ‘interpret / limit’. But the waves of the poem rise; it seems to be something — the debris thrown by the waves — but then, in the final and Shakespearean couplet, everything expands, including the poet’s consciousness: we get ‘The sea cannot control what it finds; I just keep making that tender, fidgety sound. ‘ Notice the sudden and perfect rhyme, as if the real theme has suddenly snapped into place; Notice how the seven syllables in the penultimate line abruptly whistle into a full 12-syllable Alexandrine like something from a Spenser poem. And notice also how the last line diverts our attention from the garbage of the sea to the emotion that it represents metaphorically, that speaks to us with tenderness while it lulls us to sleep, but at the same time remains restless in its movement, as we are. In short, the poem brilliantly communicates the ambivalent human condition. The good thing about this achievement is the metaphor of the sea itself: it is undeniable that it has often been used as a metaphor in this way, but Manlow here has made the metaphor his own. That is amazing.

If “Sea Poem” is awesome, then “Marilyn” is more. It usually also represents a theme that Manlow is interested in and explores extremely well in several of the other poems – a seething sexuality that packs a punch! See “Delilah” too! Again, in “Marilyn,” the final couplet is magnificent, pulling together all the strands of the poem and her shattered life (this of course is Marilyn Monroe) and then suggesting even deeper, even darker thoughts: “Towards the bright lights that she brings pain, / Think, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. ” Wow, this truncated reference to Shakespeare and specifically Macbeth reflecting the aftermath of his wife’s suicide is writing of the highest order. Nothing here is laborious, everything is compact and revealing: the end is inevitable. Wonderful poetry.

Space prohibits further analysis, but I must comment on “Entertaining the dictator” before I finish this review. This poem is the largest poem in the collection. First, it is a villanelle, a notoriously difficult form to master; second, everything I’ve talked about before (the slanting rhymes, the seething sexuality, the powerful ending) is here in abundance. But we also have disgust and revulsion, and what we might call political poetry. Manlow is not preaching; rather, he is observing and describing, and he does so, through the repetitive form of villanelle, in a somewhat mechanical way. However, the cumulative effect of doing this adds up to a full accusation of fascism (or dictatorships in general) and also in the bottom line a full accusation of us: “Yet we had done nothing, and no one had said a word. “. This leads directly to Hitler and the collective failure of anyone to oppose him until it was too late and he was in full control.

That is why I highly recommend this collection to all poetry lovers – people who love form, structure, clarity, and ideas. For those who love ‘free’ verse, self-indulgent waffles, anything-goes-but-it’s-my-poetry, I suggest you avoid this collection, because it is real poetry and it is likely to bother you, especially the rhyming bits! !