Erato

by Deryn Rees-Jones

Named after the Greek muse of lyric poetry, Erato combines documentary-style prose narratives with the passionate lyric poetry for which Rees-Jones is renowned. Here, however, as she experiments with form, particularly the sonnet, Rees-Jones asks questions about the value of the poet and poetry itself. What is the difference, she asks in one poem, between a sigh and a song? Erato’s themes are manifold but particularly focus on personal loss, desire and recovery, in the context of a world in which wars and displacement of people has become a terrifying norm.

In the narrative of transformations that unfold, the invocation of Erato also carries with it a sense of errata and erasure. As stories and ideas are repeated, and recurring imagery -- of fires, bees, birds – is continually reframed, we are asked to replay, rethink, rename. How do we step out from the ‘perpetual loop’ of trauma? And how do we find a way of processing painful change? Here, bewilderment in the face of ongoing historical tragedy is countered by the Rees-Jones’s close and careful attention to immediate or remembered experience, and the importance of the body, whether this is lying awake at night with a sleepless child, the felling of a backyard tree, walking in Paris observing the encampments of refugees, or the dreamlike conversation she has with the radio about bombs and the use of drones.

Erato includes elegies for family members and close friends, including an impressive and moving long poem ‘I.M.’. Also included here is the autobiographical ‘Caprice’ in which Rees-Jones explores with musical abandon ‘the scribble-mess’ of self, and the ‘grainy, atomized emotion coursing through in middle age’.

Throughout Erato there is a compelling sense of continued curiosity, of thoughtful questioning, of questing for truths. The author’s background in the classics, her immersion in modern poetry as well as a deep interest in modern art, all combine to influence the essential quality of this work.

Erato is Deryn Rees-Jones’ fifth collection of poetry for Seren.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2019

About the author

Rees-Jones is an Anglo-Welsh poet and professor of poetry at the University of Liverpool. She has a PhD from Birkbeck where she studied women poets. She has published four volumes of poetry. 'Burying the Wren' was a TLS Book of the Year and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

Reviews

[Boo · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Something I knew was only beginning.
Something, I knew, was at an end."

I have read a lot of poetry in the last couple of years. This is up amongst the best of them. This collection takes its title from Erato, the Muse of Lyric poetry. It beautifully covers and questions the world we live in. It uses language with subtlety and strength to talk about big subjects: nature, love, death, grief, fear, terrorism, remembering and forgetting.

"And now when I walk with my son and daughter down the street
it is with you and their lost father and the future and the notes of the
piano not played and the length of stride as the sun creates shadow
and the small pieces of LEGO in my pocket like the fragments of a dead
language just translated."

I liked pretty much every poem here but I had a particular soft spot for Mon Amour, Lyrebird, Siren, Walk, Lapse, I.M., Erasure, Heartbreak, and Nightjar.

I've said in pretty much every poetry review I've put up on Goodreads that I lack the technical knowledge to analyse the engineering of these poems, but I know when something moves me. And these poems moved me to both thought and emotion. What more do you want from poetry?

"...Under the line in caps lock I write: A poem
teaches us what we don't yet know."

[Thomas Goddard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection that follows a lot of the standard poetic themes: love, grief, change.

What is most present is its realness in the sense of its kinship to clarity and not shying away from allowing a little to go unsaid. Because that's perfectly reasonable for humans, that element of unspoken recognition. A familiarity that needs no translation.

To that end I was rather touched by quite a few poems.

Siren, Lapse and Fires were my top poems here and I read each many times.

Definitely a collection I'll return to.

Was a tiny bit disappointed at the length of the collection. Felt a little light.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant, moving and intelligent portrayal of loss and how we deal with it. I borrowed this book from a friend and will have to buy my own copy as I know I will want to read it again.

[Lucy S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a rich, thoughtfully put together collection - the poems often seem to exist in their own important, slightly magic world

[Cooch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four and a half Stars

This is an innovative and moving set of poems. Rees -Jones is particularly strong on the themes of loss, grief and love.