“To Gaze Unflinchingly,” a review by Carlene Gadapee of Glyn Maxwell’s New and Selected Poems

New and Selected Poems
Glyn Maxwell
Arrowsmith Press, 2024
201 pp.

Glyn Maxwell’s collection, New and Selected Poems, is comprised of work that spans from 1990 to the present. The sections do not appear in chronological order; instead, they follow a path that suggests the form of many of his poems throughout; winding, challenging, at times mysterious and lyric, and at others, wryly funny. The poems beckon to the reader, inviting them to connect, to follow, and to enjoy the journey.

Reading through these poems produces an unusual response: I feel the ground shift, and the light glows, and then it flattens, winks out, and appears again, much like the mythic will o’the wisp of Celtic legends. I get a sense of co-location; I think I know where I am, but then, maybe I’m elsewhere, all at the same time. Maxwell keeps me wondering where I am, but I’m more than willing to go along and figure it out as I go.

The collection begins with an ars poetica, titled “Fall From Then.” It announces the poet-speaker’s purpose: “What he made/ had form, so silence formed around it…/…till it was made/ of the same stuff heaven’s made of, this stuff.”  We are all invited on a labyrinthine journey, one that is, at times, both daunting and mystifying, but at others, the pain, the sarcasm, and the flippancy that underscores the text shows us what Maxwell is up to—and he forces us to gaze unflinchingly at the real, the iconic, and the unlovely as they are revealed to us.

In poems like “The Nap,” we wander through the physical and the metaphysical landscape, both locating and then searching for our sense of placed-ness. The speaker says, “I’m shown one thing from nothing. When that ends/ I’m nothing with the best of them,” and “That’s how you sense it too/ in your London flat late afternoon….” We are caught up in a both/and situation: nothingness and the solidity of a London flat.

Maxwell is also a master craftsman of sound. With poems like “The Last Don’t Know,” the reader is compelled to read them aloud (as most poems deserve to be). The repeated use of O sounds is gloriously hypnotic: “Not that she knows nothing, she knows loads, / went home with many books on her old barrow….” just sings. The ending is especially poignant, made even more so by the sonic quality. The speaker says, “…and we know what she knows, / for through our dreams forever now/ she comes and goes.”

There are several beautiful poems written in form throughout the collection as well. The second section of the text begins with a deftly written sestina titled “Us.” In the same section, there are other poems that are “after” poems and poets of the traditional Western canon. There is one that is written as a sort of response and extrapolation of Browning’s “My Last Duchess,” titled “Last,” which begins with “That’s my last murder on the murder wall.” What? I was immediately engaged; the Browning poem is standard fare in most high school literature classes, but Maxwell’s homage pulls us along even further into the imagined situation and subject matter. It is purely delightful to read.  A few pages later, there is a poem titled “If” which is written after Kipling. It is as dark as it needs to be, as a sort of counterpoint to the original poem, written in formal verse. The ending of the poem sums up the subject matter and anchors the tone: “Ours is not the world and all that’s in it, / Ours is how we live and if we care, / Ours is everyone’s last passing minute; / Now you can’t say you didn’t meet them there.”

The next section of the collection takes us to much earlier work, dating from the early 1990s. Of particular interest is “Thief On The Cross,” the tone of which is both bitter and refreshingly sardonic. The speaker in the poem begins with, “How are you doing on yours, my pal/ in crime?” and ends with “…we’re only smack bank where our blessed old dears/ predicted, all those years/ gone, but this one isn’t one of us lot./ He’s innocent, he can’t help.” This poem gives voice to the other players in the Passion scene, and it snaps us out of the complacent assumptions we might have about that received story. It hits hard, and it should.

There is also a compelling love poem in this section, titled “Watching Over.” The speaker is contemplative, saying, “Some ancient will,/…commands/ you be watched over now, and, to that end,/ exacerbates the wind and whipping rains/ or amplifies the howls of animals/ to make my waking watchful and tense,/ though…there is no mind/ to hurt you, nor one raindrop on the wind.”

Other poems in the collection dip us into metaphysical contemplation, like “On a Devon Road,” or present us with heartbreakingly elegiac and ekphrastic poems like “My Grandfather at the Pool.” Maxwell also treats us to a sort of mystery play, titled “Hometown Mystery Cycle,” which both recalls and renews the tradition of mystery and miracle plays as they were enacted as far back as the 10th and 11th centuries. This poem makes the scene contemporary and familiar to us with references to children cycling around town, catching bits and pieces of various plays as they are enacted, and “If we’re quick/ we can leg it to Lazarus, set up our picnic,/ still be in time for the beauty they’ve got to/ assault with tomatoes till Jesus says not to.” Such fun, these scenes are recounted with a healthy dose of irreverence but still capture the festival air and excitement of it all.

There’s also “A Play Of The Word,” which is a wonderfully complex poem that shows the reader the true opacity of language, and how it can be an invitation to focus more specifically, to puzzle out the “something” and the “it” and the “how” of the poem. This poem recalls e.e. cummings’ “anyone lived in a pretty how town” with such lines as “Her hair was the various colours of leaves/ in the fall in a heap as we watched her asleep” and “Her body was everything nobody knew/ and discussed in the dark till it wasn’t that dark,” and “The elders assembled like stones in a boat/ but it sailed as it could, while it could, when it could/ and the I saw nothing and now I see all/ and I wait and there’s nothing to wait for at all.” The poem is sad, poignant, puzzling, and profound.

Because this collection reflects over three decades of work, the careful curation and arrangement of poems is meant to take us both backward and forward, with planned stops along the way. Maxwell’s poems, at the heart of them, have one main thing in common: the poet-speaker has a careful eye and ear with which he chooses to guide us on an exploration of what it means to be in the world and also of the world. Things are as they are, no varnish needed or asked for; in these poems, what is and what could have and should have been melt together and create a poetic whole.

A poet-teacher both by vocation and by trade, Carlene M. Gadapee’s poetry and critical reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in many publications, including English Journal, Waterwheel Review, Gyroscope Review, Smoky Quartz, Think, Allium, Vox Populi, and MicroLit Almanac. Carlene also received a “Best of the Net” nomination in 2023. Her chapbook, What to Keep, will be released by Finishing Line Press in early 2025. Carlene lives and works in northern New Hampshire.