Peter
Boyle
'Museum of Space'
Reviewed by Jan
Dean
(Publisher: UQP, 2004)
 From
its superb title to its last sublime lines: 'returned to us in
the months before our death as the / shimmering stillness
in a puddle's skyward slant',[1]
Peter Boyle's fifth collection, Museum of Space (University
of Queensland Press 2004) is masterful.
Emily Dickinson's belief that there
is no way to know poetry except by contact provides a definition:
'If I read a book (and) it makes my whole body so cold no fire can
ever warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically
as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.'
Defining poetry may be impossible apart from explaining its bodily
effect. To assist, the second (and final) stanza in Boyle's 'Of
Poetry' should be committed to memory:
'The great poems are distrustful
of speech.
Quietly,
like someone very old
who has only a few hours left of human time,
they gaze into the faces around them
one by one
they kiss love into our mouths.'
Worthy of mention is the pact between
writer and reader, the writer is generous but the reader contributes
his knowledge and experience. 'Practising Bach, Riverview College
1967' (in memoriam Nick Enright) [2]
is all the more poignant because we know what happened to Enright
after he finished Year 12: such artistic promise was 'fulfilled'
by success and death at 52. Enright was our Renaissance man.
The apt cover, a reproduction of
an image by Anne Marchessou, presents the contained space of a room
overlooking an endless space of sea and sky. Because Boyle's language
has the quietness and sureness of an influential master, he persuades
thought expansion and contraction. Boyle's poetry is like the window
between the room and its view, a compliant film that at once tantalises
and comforts. This may seem contradictory but it is his play with
opposites and questioning that I find so appealing.
A number of Boyle's poems [3],
including the prose poems [4],
employ symbolism and/or surrealism. Akin to the words of a magician
or the I Ching, they may be interpreted in infinite ways.
If he expects me to perform mental gymnastics, I comply and thoroughly
enjoy the workout.
No enthusiastic reader will complain:
Boyle reveals his game early in 'the museum opens onto
the silent inexhaustible corridors of the brain.' [5]
Museum of Space is a book
to own for rereading. It reminds me of Yves Klein's 'Leap Into the
Void' (1960). Viewers still take the leap with Klein, knowing the
way, however perilous, leads to a great freedom.
—Jan Dean
Footnotes
1. p.100, These
Autumn Days. [go back to where you were]
2. Notes at the
end of the book are valuable.
[go back to where you were]
3.Examples include The Unknowable, Parable
of the Two Boxes and The Philosopher of Leopards. [go
back to where you were]
4. Examples include The Musician of Otherness
and Hammerklavier. [go
back to where you were]
5. Page 3 (The Museum of Space).
[go back to where you
were]
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