Parables & Faxes

by Gwyneth Lewis

After reading English at Cambridge, Lewis came to America as a Harkness Fellow, studying at Harvard and Columbia, and working in New York as a freelance journalist. Currently she is a television producer in Cardiff. This, her long-awaited collection of poetry in English, is a striking and ambitious debut. In addition to the above quote, Porter also states that Lewis' "extended title sequence is the most humane and mysterious succession of poems I have read for many years...Gwynth Lewis amounts to a 'New Generation' just by herself".

Genres: Poetry

77 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1995

About the author

Gwyneth Lewis was Wales' National Poet from 2005-06, the first writer to be given the Welsh laureateship. She has published eight books of poetry in Welsh and English. Chaotic Angels (Bloodaxe Books, 2005) brings together the poems from her three English collections, Parables & Faxes, Zero Gravity and Keeping Mum. Her latest book is Sparrow Tree. Gwyneth wrote the six-foot-high words for the front of Cardiff's Wales Millennium Centre (which are located just in front of the space-time continuum, as seen on Dr Who and Torchwood.)

Reviews

[hawk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe this is Gwenyth Lewis's first collection of poetry in English (having previously written, and been published, in Welsh).

I liked some poems more than others, and some/some of their subjects engaged me more than others, but overall found the whole collection enjoyable and interesting 🙂

there's something of the iconic and biblical and spiritual in many, frequently melded with observations of the natural world, and also often with the mundane day to day of living.

I liked Gwyneth Lewis's use of rhythm, rhyme, alliteration... it felt like she'd successfully managed to bring some of the patterns, traditions and rules of Welsh poetry into English.

it would be interesting to see the shape and layout of the poems on the physical page.

I also appreciated the accompanying information about the people/objects/etc some of the poems were based on (where/when relevant) - just the right amount of context 🙂


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I especially liked:

Pentecost 🐦
crossing borders. Florida.

The Hedge 🌿🥀
nice imagery. comedic and sobering.

Six Poems On Nothing 🌳🌟
in its parts... descriptions, observations, rhyme and rhythm, and it's humour 🙂😉

The Soul Mine ❤💙
a nunnery, a quarry, a chapel.

A Fanciful Marriage 😉
alot of word play 🙂 charting a marriage/relationship and family, using artistic, literary, grammatical, spiritual and other measurements and terms 🙂

Welsh Espionage 😉💚
another poem in parts (11), and I liked the different styles of the different parts. alot of rhyme, and alot of humour - all parts felt tongue in cheek in some way 😉 holds a sense of tension too... and some sadness/longing ❤💔

The Bad Shepherd 🙂🌾
lovely imagery and word play 😍

The Reference Library 📚 💕
gorgeous rhyming and rhythm and language 🙂

Parables and Faxes 🐝 🐝 🌟
another in parts, many (25) parts! at about a half hour long, the longest of the poems in this collection. divided into alternating parables and faxes 😉🙂 eventually the meeting of the two. I felt quite mixed about this one, but not in a bad way... 🙂❤


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accessed as an RNIB talking book, well read by Di Langford 🙂 ❤💚

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised to discover this was actually my fourth book by Lewis, a bilingual Welsh author: two memoirs, one of depression and one about marriage; and now two poetry collections. The table of contents suggest there are only 16 poems in the book, but most of the titles are actually headings for sections of anywhere between 6 and 16 separate poems. She ranges widely at home and abroad, as in “Welsh Espionage” and the “Illinois Idylls.” “I shall taste the tang / of travel on the atlas of my tongue,” Lewis writes, an example of her alliteration and sibilance. She’s also big on slant and internal rhymes – less so on end rhymes, though there are some. Medieval history and theology loom large, with the Annunciation featuring more than once. I couldn’t tell you now what that many of the poems are about, but Lewis’s telling is always memorable.

Sample lines:

For the one
who said yes,
how many
said no?
…
But those who said no
for ever knew
they were damned
to the daily
as they’d disallowed
reality’s madness,
its astonishment.

(from “The ‘No’ Madonnas,” part of “Parables & Faxes”)

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Michael Arnold · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked it well enough I suppose. Need to reread this one at some point.

[David Anthony Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gwyneth Lewis is a Welsh writer whose poetry in English is infused with the Welsh language and land. But there are touches of cummings and Dickinson in such poems as "A Fanciful Marriage" and "Annunciation."Her humor and slantwise look at living in this world are graced with a humane touch and a lyrical voice. She uses patterns of lines with end half-rhymes that are enjambed so the music is there but subtle. Lewis views modern life through a lens of fable and some whimsy, weaving the human and the natural in close identification. She is unheralded today in the US and should be read as a partial antidote to the prosy fracturing of the late Postmodern verse that pervades MFA programs.