The piece is a peon to Ted Hughes’ CROW but the reader is reminded in rhythm and rhyme quite quickly and emphatically of Dylan Thomas at the beginning of the loquacious locomotion of Max Porter’s GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS.
The very title of part one of this Thomas tinted tome, A Lick of Night, conjures bible black habitat, but not with boat bobbing bays, more the interior landscape of the recently bereaved:-
“I felt like Earth in that extraordinary picture of the planet surrounded by a thick belt of space junk.”
And then the bible black, sloe black, blackbird black blackbird makes his bombastic entrance, –
“There was a crack and a whoosh and I was smacked back, winded, onto the doorstep. The hallway was pitch black and freezing cold and I thought…………………”
By page twenty-three, the boys, motherless, mourning, intone: “Dad has gone. Crow is in the bathroom, where he often is because he likes the acoustics. We are crouched by the closed door listening. He is speaking very slowly, very clearly. He sounds old fashioned, like Dad’s vinyl recording of Dylan Thomas.”
The overtones of Thomas and Hughes are honed and toned by a choral trio:– CROW, DAD and BOYS. A triptych narrative navigating the relationship wrecked, grief reefed, ghost line coast line of loss.
The CROW is a symbol of the blackness of DAD’s trauma, the black thought widower, winnowing for a lick of night in the morning, for a little break in the mourning, mascot of a dead parent society.
Dad is working on a book titled Ted Hughes’ Crow on the Couch: A Wild Analysis., the publishers of which hope might appeal to everyone sick of Ted & Sylvia archaeology.
It’s a poem by Ted Dad digs up for Mum’s ashes scattering – Lovesong – with the feather like line “Their little cries fluttered into the curtains” – conjuring remembrance of the early days, ‘when our love was settling into the shape of our lives like cake mixture reaching the corners of the tin as it swells and bakes.’
Prose pours into poetry in serpentine reciprocity, streams of consciousness flow into an ocean of emotion in this strange bird of a book.
GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS is a remarkable debut by Max Porter, a poet prose stylist in the thrall of Ted Hughes. Its inspiration should inspire readers to rediscover that poet’s work, an accomplishment to crow about.
GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS by Max Porter is published by Faber.