Speak, Old Parrot
by Dannie Abse
Author's Web site: http://www.dannieabse.com
ISBN: 9780091944643Author's Web site: http://www.dannieabse.com
Genre: poetry
Available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0091944643/karelsoftw-21
Available on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/speak-old-parrot/id616694158?mt=11
Hutchinson, 2013.
80 pp.
$27.95 (hardcover) and
$13.99 (eBook).
Reviewed by Katelyn S. Eden
Dannie Abse, doctor, author, playwright, and
most famously, poet, revisits many of the themes of his previous works in his
most recent poetry collection, Speak, Old
Parrot. Abse, prolific author and recent winner of the Wales Book of the
Year Award, enchants and enthralls readers of every age with his musings on the
themes of love, loss, death, medicine, and tradition.
The body of work aligns with the
jewel-toned parrot on the cover, speaking to both the bird’s ability to talk of
tragedy and hilarity alike, and to Abse’s ability to deal deftly and vividly
with these primary elements throughout the collection. In Speak, Old Parrot, the lyrical and
narrative elements that form the skeleton for many of Abse’s works are palpable;
yet, Abse retains the clever witticisms, sharp imagery, and eloquent narrative
style that he is known for. As Abse enjoys his ninetieth year in 2013, the
motifs of aging and the frailty of existence are at the heart of the
collection:
Now Time wastes
me and there’s hardly time
to fuss for more
vascular speech.
The aspen tree
trembles as I do
and there are
feathers in the wind.
Quick, quick,
speak, old
parrot,
do I not feed
you with my life?
(“Talking to
Myself,” 1-2)
“Talking to Myself” and others in the
collection share the unique and uncomfortable juxtaposition of bright mind and
aging body and Abse adeptly captures this unique juncture in one’s life in this
collection. Abse’s masterful handling of enjambment and spare, powerful diction
are akin to his other collections, and especially the poems anthologized in On Doctoring. “Portrait of an Old
Doctor,” too, highlights Abse’s multifaceted poetic style and the experiences
that are the indelible thread in Abse’s works:
He had been a
confidence man for the patient.
That’s how it
was in The Theatre of Disease
and, at the
final act, he had lifted
his stethoscope
to listen as if to Mozart.
Then, silently,
relatives and friends filed out.
No applause.
None for Hippocrates’ art.
(“Portrait of an
Old Doctor,” 5)
In Speak, Old Parrot, it is clear that
Abse’s poems are designed to be savored; each beautiful, tragic, humorous, and
lyrical layer affects the reader differently, and combined, such as in “Portrait
of an Old Doctor,” the effect holds a certain power that only expert poets such
as Abse can successfully wield. Abse’s compassion and humility as a physician
shines through in this collection, and his reverence for humanity is truly
unmatched.
On a more solemn vein, Speak, Old Parrot deals honestly and
painfully with the themes of love and loss. “Moonbright,” a poem regarding the
death of the speaker’s father, describes with raw emotion the last moments of
the father’s life and the first moments of loss for the speaker:
At home, feeling
hollow, I shamelessly wept
-whether for you
or myself I do not know.
Tonight a
bracing wind makes my eyes cry
while a cloud
dociles an impudent moon
that is and was,
and is again, and was.
Men become
mortal the night their fathers die.
(“Moonbright,”
9)
The sheer weight of loss, the depth of
pain that is clear in the poem, is enough to make heavy even the hardest of
hearts; but Abse’s ability to display honest emotion through the masterful
craftsmanship of the poetic line is what sets his poems apart from his renowned
contemporaries, namely William Carlos Williams. In keeping with the shifty
ventriloquist personality of the parrot that the collection draws its
inspiration from, the poem following “Moonbright” is “Sunbright,” a delicate,
dazzling rendering of the speaker’s first encounter with a beautiful woman. The
collection is arranged not by subject matter, but rather in an arcing of human
emotion, spanning from childlike wonder, to all-consuming lust, to love, to
devastating pain and anger at death and loss.
Perhaps the most distinct and wonderful
element of Abse’s collection, and his works in general, is his ability to
effortlessly ensnare the reader in the heart of his work and tug him or her
along, gently, through the spectrum of human emotion and experience. Anyone who
reads Speak, Old Parrot will benefit
from it. Young readers will relish the lively, passionate, travel-oriented
poems; seasoned readers will savor the difficult truths of aging and reassuring
tradition; and many readers will enjoy the Romantic undercurrent in the poems
that deal with the subject of love present in the collection. From cover to
cover, the reader becomes invested in the power of Abse’s words, the
concentrated structures of his poems, and his unparalleled translation of human
experience into ink on the page.
Speak, Old Parrot is a brilliant collection that is
accessible to any reader. Abse challenges the reader to fully explore the power
of the human frame and emotion, and it is truly a joy to extract the essence of
the collection. Abse is a poetic titan and incomparable wordsmith, and Speak, Old Parrot is the inimitable
concentration of poetry that speaks to almost all of his other collections. Speak, Old Parrot is the impressive
flourish with which Abse began his ninetieth year, and he reveals no sign of
slowing his unbelievable pace or work any time soon.
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