READINGS OF THE WORK BY PHILIP HARVEY

The grassy smell of earth and young greenery made your head ache, like the smell of vodka and pancakes in the week before Lent. (page 84) The book fills up effortlessly with resonant descriptions. Having only this week started a book the plot of which I have known for over forty years, it is these close descriptions, together with the internal thoughts of the main characters, that stun with their immediacy. Here, for example, is an analogy that isn’t an analogy, more like an opportunity to raise up the evocation, for indeed nature and religion are at one in this seasonal image. Where else but Russia? we think And its reality of “vodka and pancakes” only enriches the nostalgia. We observe Lent at the end of the sentence, wondering in anticipation whether the church seasons will be mentioned in the same intimate way after the Revolution in 1917, or if they will be slowly replaced in the narrative by other ways of marking out time. Only by reading the book will we find

A Trick of Lightness New and Selected Poems by Chris Wallace-Crabbe (Carcarnet Oxford Poets; 2013) Chris Wallace-Crabbe, New and Selected Poems Reviewer: Philip Harvey Weighty words and heavy ideas are the very stuff of this poetry, and yet one after-effect of reading Chris Wallace-Crabbe is a sense of lightness. Lightness was a recurring theme of praise for his work at the recent Melbourne symposium held in his honour, as he entered his eightieth year. The Psalmist talks of fourscore years being one of labour and sorrow, but this is not the main impression given by the new poems here. A marvellous delight in wordplay is coupled with a stable ability to describe the multidirectional mind and blessed body, as they walk lightly across the earth. Lightness does not mean lightweight, for indeed this book is packed with material that obeys the laws of gravity. One eye is trained permanently on tradition. Nor by lightness are we talking about light verse, that underr