
It Will Have Been So Beautiful by Amanda Shaw Review by Robert Dunsdon
It Will Have Been So Beautiful by Amanda Shaw
Review by Robert Dunsdon
Publisher: Lily Poetry Review
Publication Date: March 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781957755359
Pages: 92
It takes a degree of confidence, and no small skill, for a poet to swerve effortlessly and winningly from a few taut lines capturing a reflective moment in a supermarket car park, to a rather dark but gloriously digressive cautionary tale taking in coral, coracles and a poor frightened fish. It also takes a good deal more than is immediately obvious to blend into these poems, through an assured handling of language, something of consequence. Amanda Shaw, in her debut collection It Will Have Been So Beautiful, manages to achieve these things with both verve and a cool proficiency.
Happily, the author is also a poet who, outside of mere definition, appears to appreciate the full value of words – their construction, their euphony, their very appearance on the page – and seems to relish such properties. She will gladly juggle, drill and playfully enlist them to better put across what she wants to say, and as a result, whether she is speaking of longing, regret, loss or those outbreaks of joy that surprise and sustain us, the substance of their telling is enhanced and enriched.
That observation is no better demonstrated than in her poem “Fifth Moon Out”, which is a spirited proto-feminist response to a quote taken from Ovid’s Metamorphosis printed directly under the title. I’ll quote the first verse in full to give an idea of how Shaw is able to distract and then hold the reader with her invention and mischievously sardonic style:
Humans can’t keep their stories straight.
I’m a cow, I’m a priestess, I’m a moon,
my body’s bovine or it’s out of this world;
I’m gad-flied and hoofing it
or tracing my name in the dust while my father’s crying Woe!
I-O, I-O, off to be milked I go –
Concluding with a few well-chosen and combative lines, it’s an unusual piece which finds the poet’s attention alighting on a colourful literary landscape to pick up on what may seem neither here nor there, and slyly making it relevant.
Back in the real world, an affecting and atmospheric poem whose title, in Italian, roughly translates as “with you I will share my happy days”, and taken from an operatic drinking song, is an intricately detailed and nicely nuanced impression of that particular breed of loneliness experienced in a foreign city, in this case Rome. We are reminded of the unfamiliar noises, the monotonous counting of the day’s routine as it slowly unfolds, the anonymous tread on the stair. These are the triggers for the sort of fretful feelings of isolation which build and build, compelling you at last to try to establish some kind of human contact; to think: “I might unseal myself / and venture out into the hall / to tell the neighbor his arias are sweet”. Shaw’s ability to sketch out a feel for place or setting in a few economical strokes is evident here, as is her careful use of tempo, whereby through a gradual accrual of observation and sentiment a particular mood or feeling is established. This last is an admirable quality, undervalued to some extent in contemporary verse, and one that aspiring poets would do well to learn.
Turning away from the Eternal City, we are confronted with matters of more immediate concern. A good many of the poems here deal with what we rather loosely term Nature, whether by touching on her glories in some wonderfully inventive and lyrical passages, or in quietly persuasive allusions to the various threats to her well-being that become ever more apparent, ever more troubling. Beginning with a description of a fussy neighbour who, given the planet, would have employees sift “basalt from sand, bring him the white / dollars left in the sieve”, the short piece titled “Invasive” proves to be a particularly fine example. It goes on to mock our attempts to tame, tidy and dominate, asserting the power of nature to re-establish herself, to disrupt the complacent order of things. Which is somewhat reassuring, if humbling; but resilient as she is, Nature can surely only take so much of our folly, our grinding arrogance.
The broad range of ideas within these pages, considered and articulated in such a pleasingly fresh manner, is indicative of a mind that is greedily curious and willing to absorb the subtleties, the realities and the unlimited intimations swirling around as we negotiate each day. Disdaining polemic, agenda or presumption, these poems are no more and no less than gently proffered examples of discovery and insight. They invite us to reflect on anything from an April in Vermont where last October’s leaves are “graven on the skin of the ice / still skimming the Connecticut”, to bees dancing obligingly; from a quietly paced and detailed piece combining an eccentric science teacher, Herman Melville and the various properties of water, to the rather wonderful, if somewhat painful, “Love at 48” – a rueful deliberation on the romantic idealism of the young and carefree as compared to the more mundane practicalities of middle-age domesticity, concluding:
This weekend, the toilet is leaking, source
unknown. That boy
has never returned from the hardware store
with a liquid whose enzymes delight me.
Reflecting Amanda Shaw’s breezily reverential attitude to the subtlety and adaptability of words, a piece I found to be just the right side of whimsical, and defiantly original, is built around a neighbour’s ignorance of the term “detritus”, after the poet has inadvertently swept some garden rubbish on to his deck below. Both self-deprecating and more than a little dotty, it references the foppery of an English documentary presenter, a mythical king, the attentions of a dog called Stacy and the controversial amateur archaeologist Johann Schliemann. A chatty narrative, free-flowing but nicely put together, it is a bit off the wall perhaps, but a little gem nevertheless.
And I found a lot to like in the beautifully developed poem “Far from New Hampshire”, in which the narrator sets the scene of a particular childhood memory with the lyrically inviting:
I see my brother
seared by light in a field of weeds
contemplating a perfect buttercup
and in my hand a milkweed pod,
seed-floss tinged with green and clinging –
Yet what follows is a disquieting story of a boy’s bewilderment, and his older sister’s suddenly imposed responsibility, following the divorce of their parents. Tender and transparent, it’s not in any way judgemental or moralistic, rather it’s quite simply a gentle tale of innocence dispelled.
The poems offered here by Amanda Shaw who, as teacher and editor, knows a thing or two about her art or craft, seem to me to confirm that a lively and bold use of language, discreetly disciplined and applied with a light touch, can put across an idea or sentiment just as powerfully as the more earnest, almost deadening approach which appears to have taken hold in many a collection of verse. Various and engaging, they each carry within them something of account, revealing itself sometimes readily, sometimes obliquely like the discordant echo of a distant bell. It’s a formula that makes for a fascinating and most agreeable read.
Since receiving her MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers in January 2020, Amanda Shaw has been a caretaker for her mother. A teacher for over 20 years, she also works as an editor at the World Bank and is the book review editor for Lily Poetry Review. Though she has lived in Brooklyn, Detroit, Geneva, and Rome, she currently divides her time between New Hampshire, where she was born, and Washington, D.C.
Robert Dunsdon lives near Oxford in the UK. His poetry has been published in Ambit, Allegro, The Crank, Candelabrum, The Cannon’s Mouth, Decanto, Picaroon, Pennine Platform, Purple Patch and others. His book reviews have featured in Tupelo Quarterly, Heavy Feather Review, The Lit Pub, Sugar House Review, Colorado Review and Poetry International.
18 December 2024
Leave a Reply