Age and Poetry

To this day, Michael Longley is the only poet I have ever laid eyes upon. Longley, moving ever so slowly in his teddy-coat, passed me on Botanic Avenue, Belfast, sometime in Spring 2019. I walked on and never bothered to stop and chat. Despite seeing many photographs of him, I knew nothing about this man – apart from his friendship with fellow poet, Seamus Heaney. I walked home with a sting of regret.

Then I came across Longley’s latest collection, Angel Hill (2017), when browsing in my local library. I took it home, hoping that the slim book promised worthwhile poems.

This is a collection filled with landscapes, animals and memories. Longley distills the natural world with an eye towards age – as a poet who has been writing professionally for over half a century, he is hyper-aware of his oldness. In a poem entitled ‘Fifty Years’ (p. 33), Longley addresses his shock towards the amount of time that has passed.

You have walked with me again and again

Up the stony path to Carrigskeewaun

And passed among the fairy rings to pick

Mushrooms for breakfast and for poetry.

Mixing the biographical in his verse, Longley achieves a sense of peace and repose in this collection, writing in unrhymed stanzas and conversational tones. The overall effect is comforting, and even blissful.

Some of the collection’s best poems confront memory. Dorothy Molloy, an Irish poet who died in 2004, provides the material for Longley’s eponymous ‘Dorothy Molloy’ (p. 16). A first reading reveals the level of intimacy Longley felt with Molloy’s work.

Remembering Dorothy Molloy

I returned to the holly bush,

My symbol for her genius,

And discovered honeysuckle

Decorating the prickly leaves.

The poem ends with Longley’s reflection on how ‘Molloy would worry’ about a fox seeking a ‘mallard’s deep nest-well’. It is at once an elegy and celebration of Molloy’s poetic personality.

But Longley’s most astonishing poem is also his shortest. ‘Cowslip’ is a haiku, written in a 6-5-6 metre (p. 3). Here Longley’s language is at its sharpest, invading the mind like a well-argued statement.

The way a cowslip bends

Recalls a cart track,

Crushed sunlight at my feet.

In Basho-esque fashion, Longley’s words attend to his objects with a delicate yet firm hand. Longley’s final verb in the poem (‘Crushed’) retains its preciseness and brilliance upon every reading.

Angel Hill is a superb collection. Longley conveys a deep respect for both his contemporaries and predecessors – namely in his ode to Shakespeare called ‘The Sonnets’ (p. 39). His engagement with natural landscapes draws on a well-worn tradition in English poetry, but does not detract the quality of style present in this collection. Longley never fails to write in a unique voice, offering the reader provoking reflections on life in the north and the nature of old age in works of art. A beautiful, enduring song of a book, Angel Hill attests to the strength of Longley’s skills as a writer aged 80.

Source:

Angel Hill. By Michael Longley. Johnathan Cape: London, 2017. (Cape Poetry). £10. Pp 61. 978-1-91121-408-3.