songs of the redwet bones / the king is dead by
Reuben Woolley
mountain poem
put
that idea here
safe. hold
on to it . your
life
de-pends
on the next word
the king is dead is a Promethean gamble that pays off for Reuben
Woolley, a book that seems to be absurdly minimalist in its expression manages
to body-cage and reduce universal themes to striking symbols that set into
balance the agonies of existence along with a patient longing for death. Death
is a transformative process that has some inherent physical repellence. Its
leavings are everywhere, and can destabilise one for moments, or for
eternities,
panacea
death came early
this morning
I know . I saw
her
she came strafing
quiet houses .
slashing
infants with
shrapnel
gutting the sick
with bayonets . she said
I am only here
invited . I limit
damage
remove pain . I
am
the final cure
The body lets us
down all the time. It is the site of the vagaries of coming age that Yeats may
have hinted at, although he hardly put the cartilage and the blood-bag into a
poem. He put a tattered coat upon a stick and allowed us to derive what
symbolic meaning we could from it.
Woolley alludes
to medical processes and to bodily experience and perception at the elemental
level of being. Necessity advises the theme and subtext of this book. the king is dead is imbued with
physicality,
I collect
the redwet bones
of recent
unbuilding.
from prey
Here, an Egyptian
longing to fuck everything and transform here and now into a sacred and simple
animal that does not have all these complex nerve-endings and crosswires. I
think of Hughes’ dung beetle symbol,
Imagine
These
bone-crushing mouths the mouths
That labour for
the beetle
Who will roll her
back into the sun.
From The Dogs Are Eating Your Mother, Ted
Hughes (Birthday Letters, 1998)
Transformation
from the plane of physicality is explored at an elemental level in the king is dead,
we eat
the hearts
of kings we kill .
a
curious
transformation . are
alchemical gold
black veils
become us well.
The eponymously
titled series at the heart of the book explores the rage of human wastage and
the necessity of physical and psychical transformation. There is a psychic
economy to how mythos and ceremony are presented by Woolley,
& then
the final
procession through all these changes
fast & lethal
. a song for dawn
when the singer
was elsewhere
wasting his
stinking mouth
& from his
back
fusing
the ritual
firebird
in the sunshine
crack
from the king is dead (iii)
Woolley discusses
his approach to necessity and economy in the beautiful mountain poem, there is
little left for the poet but the words that form images of phantasmagoric death
queues and unearthly processions.
These are of
little consequence when the stumbling bird, the carcass, the news-media act as
revelators of the mystery. One need not look far because your death walks
beside you at all times, best become his familiar, after all there is no
eluding him/it in the final moments of a
life,
guides
my deaths sleep
with me
I shall not forge
· I
do not step
lightly
through bones · I
name
all the faces
they are my
necessary
ghosts · they
fall
like fruit sweet
plenty · putrid
beds of richness
· I am not
guilty · I just
survive · just
breathe and sleep
This
is an excellent debut from a writer that I have become familiar with on social
media. I have read some of his poetry and collaborative work on different media
strands. It's excellent news that Reuben Woolley now has a first collection.
Expect more and interesting work from him over the coming years.
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