review of a taste for hemlock by michele vassal by alan garvey

7/31/2019 Review of a Taste for Hemlock by Michele Vassal by Alan Garvey

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A Taste for Hemlockby Michle Vassal

Alan Garvey

I had the pleasure of recently attending a book launch in Dublin in TheWinding Stair, an independent bookshop where books were hung likewind chimes or dream-catchers in the window, exceptional for its picture-window view of one of the capital citys most attractive landmarks, theHapenny Bridge. Garlanded with icicle-blue Christmas lights, the viewstretched over the dark waters of the Liffey, reflecting the festive lightsback at us on the double, while inside the store it was warm andcompanionable with red wine flowing freely; the air rose with themelodies of flute and harp in accompaniment to a poets reading. It wasone of those evenings where people say, You should have been there.It was a brief reading but one that would leave you with a desire to read

more. They say good wines dont travel, that ambience is inseparablefrom the experience but Michle VassalsA Taste for Hemlockis one ofthose rare exceptions.

Vassals previous collection, Sandgames, was published in 2000. Thelong break of eleven years between the publication ofSandgames andATaste for Hemlockhas had the effect of laying a fine vintage down to restand mature. A Taste for Hemlockis a significant and sizable collection,which makes it both a delight and maddeningly difficult to review one isleft a little like the proverbial child in a candy store, which way to turn

next?

Reference is made to a painterly sensuality in the blurb at the back ofthis book, and the authors wide-ranging verbal and visual palette isindeed unavoidable. It is not just a choice of the right word, but the rightword that makes for such a luscious use of language. For those whoworry about language having a primacy in poetry over that of emotion,ATaste for Hemlockis a well-rounded, full-bodied and mature collection.

Theres a Baudelairean sensibility and aesthetic at work in A Taste for

Hemlock, a delight in and of the senses, a savouring and appreciation ofall that the wide world has to offer, and the bitter flavour attendant onwisdom. Theres also an understanding that the brightest moment of anobjects life, whether that be an animal, plant or fruit, or even a human,is just before the turning point of decay or a bruise; but that this iscyclical and to be anticipated is one of our consolations for loss.

A Taste for Hemlock is never garish or lurid in its use of colour, noroverbearing; there is a judicious application of colour to evoke aparticular sensation. Vassal does not shy away from using charcoals,

greyscale, white or black for she demonstrates an awareness thatsometimes the best use of colour is in the vacuum of white, a negativespace where imagination has room to play or terrify itself, as the case


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she does not lapse into sentimentality or schmaltz, perhaps it is too keenan awareness that blood will always be drawn:

and on my lipsyour tonguethe rose pink bladethat slices out my heart

The author ofA Taste for Hemlock is not just sensual but uninhibitedlysensuous, as anyone who has plucked les fleurs du mal must be I likethe stark fact of a poem set in Cork where:

we ate nothingbut each others shadowdrank nothing

but nights black milkand tequilaand we fuckedfrozen on a musty floorwhile the Cityriverstrapped to the marshesstraddled by seventeen bridgessuccumbed nightlyto Beamishs incenseof malt and bladder wrack

pale pilgrims looking for perfect sins.

This is the greatness inherent within Michele Vassals poetry, she ishuman and brave enough to follow those enigmas and make themtransparent with a pellucid light, so that, after our travails and a sojournin the desert, we become painfully aware yet grateful of what was worthwaiting for. Sharp, clever, funny, wonderfully evocative and with morehard-won wisdom than most, this is one of the 2011s best collections ofpoetry.

http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=238&a=171

It is no surprise that the author ofA Taste for Hemlockhas a book aboutthe poetry of cooking on the back boiler, slowly simmering away.


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review of a taste for hemlock by michele vassal by alan garvey

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