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Wing
Matthew Francis's latest collection celebrates the richness of nature and of our responses to it. The pleasures of summer are emblazoned in the colourful wings and evocative names of butterflies, while a nocturnal encounter with an earwig becomes a joyous incantation to the 'witchy-beetle, forkin-robin' of dialect. His love of history, embodied in his acclaimed Mandeville and The Mabinogi, gives rise to a sequence based on Robert Hooke's microscopic observations. There are tributes to the poets Basho, Dafydd ap Gwilym and W. S. Graham, to fireworks, apple varieties, and hot toddies. And, in a moving elegy for a friend killed in a parachute accident, Francis shows us a vertiginous vision of a world where even the dead 'sleep on the wing'.
- GenresPoetryNatureNonfiction
72 pages, Hardcover
Published February 6, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
March 19, 2020
This is a remarkable and hugely enjoyable collection.
The central section, a sequence of poems based on the seventeenth century treatise Micrographia by Robert Hooke, is at the heart of the book - an exquisite set of contemplations on a New World of 'smallness' being explored for the first time. The world under our world. It is as much about the human at the end of the microscope as it is about the marvellously evoked specimens on the plate, using every resource of language - if it wasn't so controlled I would suspect Francis was showing off. This is a book very much in the style of the Metaphysical poets - Donne's (and Blake's) flea is its totem.
The opening and closing sections are more varied and quirky - exercises in the power of observation and language that are sometimes guardedly personal but unendingly descriptive and sometimes pure revelling in the wonder of words, almost for their own sake - a magical poem that contains only one vowel; a poem that references a vast number of obscure breeds of apple (that would have warned Gerald Finzi's heart)...
The central section, a sequence of poems based on the seventeenth century treatise Micrographia by Robert Hooke, is at the heart of the book - an exquisite set of contemplations on a New World of 'smallness' being explored for the first time. The world under our world. It is as much about the human at the end of the microscope as it is about the marvellously evoked specimens on the plate, using every resource of language - if it wasn't so controlled I would suspect Francis was showing off. This is a book very much in the style of the Metaphysical poets - Donne's (and Blake's) flea is its totem.
The opening and closing sections are more varied and quirky - exercises in the power of observation and language that are sometimes guardedly personal but unendingly descriptive and sometimes pure revelling in the wonder of words, almost for their own sake - a magical poem that contains only one vowel; a poem that references a vast number of obscure breeds of apple (that would have warned Gerald Finzi's heart)...
December 26, 2024
Feels like listening to the pre-sleep mind-rambles of a specialist taxonomist who has sifted through his science to focus on the beauty and variety of the natural world he is obsessed with.
November 20, 2020
For me this book was a sandwich: two sections of reading that was mostly 3-4 stars for my taste, but the meat of section two was so wonderful that I give Wing 5 stars overall.
I’m not a great fan of nature poetry, so the poet was working against my prejudice. I do love poems about animals, but not poems that take a snapshot of a scene or run down long lists of the plants they are so smart as to name. However, Francis’s love of words also extends to creative choices that wake me up from the lists of flora. Here are some descriptions I especially liked from sections one and three:
a smear of sea
I share the evenings with someone else’s furniture
(ladybirds, aka ladybugs to Americans) mating like tiddlywinks
(typewriter) the slap of the silver lever that jerked time forward
(a diver) blurting bubbles
the liberty caps (type of mushroom) rioted on the verge by the police station
In addition to my favorite section two, there was one poem so chilling that it had to be either maudlin and clichéd or a masterpiece. Francis did it justice. “Freefall” imagines what the last parachute jump was like for a friend who died because his chute didn’t open. You’re already cringing, aren’t you? You must read it for yourself. Chopping it into bits would be a disservice.
My favorite, middle poems were from a section titled, “Micrographia: after the scientific treatise by Robert Hooke (1665).” How exciting to describe the new found micro-universe all around us as Hooke saw things under a microscope for the first time. He begins with “The Microscope.”
“…I peer through the dark,
at an object that used to be small,
now held in this cylinder
that feels like part of my eye….
There is nothing in it but myself
and this morsel of nature,
its chambers and projections,
armour plate, pincers,
more complex than I had suspected.”
I also loved the contrast, first the learned descriptions of a scientist, then this poem “Creature” in which he freely admits he has no idea what he’s looking at.
“Reading one September day
I felt it tickle the page
as if one of the letters
had broken free of the words.
It held two claws out in front,
the way a blindfolded man
protects himself from the wall….”
I’m not a great fan of nature poetry, so the poet was working against my prejudice. I do love poems about animals, but not poems that take a snapshot of a scene or run down long lists of the plants they are so smart as to name. However, Francis’s love of words also extends to creative choices that wake me up from the lists of flora. Here are some descriptions I especially liked from sections one and three:
a smear of sea
I share the evenings with someone else’s furniture
(ladybirds, aka ladybugs to Americans) mating like tiddlywinks
(typewriter) the slap of the silver lever that jerked time forward
(a diver) blurting bubbles
the liberty caps (type of mushroom) rioted on the verge by the police station
In addition to my favorite section two, there was one poem so chilling that it had to be either maudlin and clichéd or a masterpiece. Francis did it justice. “Freefall” imagines what the last parachute jump was like for a friend who died because his chute didn’t open. You’re already cringing, aren’t you? You must read it for yourself. Chopping it into bits would be a disservice.
My favorite, middle poems were from a section titled, “Micrographia: after the scientific treatise by Robert Hooke (1665).” How exciting to describe the new found micro-universe all around us as Hooke saw things under a microscope for the first time. He begins with “The Microscope.”
“…I peer through the dark,
at an object that used to be small,
now held in this cylinder
that feels like part of my eye….
There is nothing in it but myself
and this morsel of nature,
its chambers and projections,
armour plate, pincers,
more complex than I had suspected.”
I also loved the contrast, first the learned descriptions of a scientist, then this poem “Creature” in which he freely admits he has no idea what he’s looking at.
“Reading one September day
I felt it tickle the page
as if one of the letters
had broken free of the words.
It held two claws out in front,
the way a blindfolded man
protects himself from the wall….”
December 26, 2020
You know, there were a lot of beautiful words and beautiful phrases, which I loved. However, it got to a point where every other word I had to look up in the dictionary, or just not know the meaning of, to just get through one poem.
I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. But I am saying you need to take time reading these poems.
Also to whoever following my reviews, I think you are a bot. Stop.
I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. But I am saying you need to take time reading these poems.
Also to whoever following my reviews, I think you are a bot. Stop.
February 29, 2020
Just wonderful!
May 4, 2024
Hard to praise too highly. Loved it. Intricate, beautiful, moving, clever. Every bit as good as Mandeville. Will re-read straight away.
Have just done so. Every bit as good second time round.
Have just done so. Every bit as good second time round.
July 20, 2020
This one grew on me so much that I now want to read other books by Matthew Francis...such a rich vocabulary and imagination and rightly acclaimed!
January 8, 2026
An immensely accessible exploration in neatly-turned verse of the ordinary: for example, the typewriter, the clock, the waterbear, wassailing, collective nouns.
Many of these poems focus on the natural world, especially the second of the three sections, ‘Micrographia’, in which Francis recreates the wonder he encounters in Robert Hooke’s 1665 series of descriptions of what he discovered about the world of ‘small’ through his microscope.
For me, Francis’ poetry is specially characterised by two practices. The first is his preference for verse that is ordered according, usually, to lines measured by syllable count and arranged in regular stanzas. In spite of this strictness he imposes on himself and his preference not to employ any particular rhythmic pattern, his verse never loses its sense of a forward-moving pulse. The second is his facility with words that embrace the physical world with a descriptive physicality that induce, in my mouthed pronunciation at least, a sensuousness, often a pleasing plumpness, that seems to me to communicate the poet’s pleasure in the various circumambient scapes in which he lives. He is, moreover, an adept practitioner of assonance and consonance, and introduces unusual imagery that allows you to delight in the familiar. For example:
“Remember the punch and peck words had in those days,
the strain of Q in the little finger, the type head
leaning out on its stalk from its semicircular roost…” (Typewriter)
or
“There was a twilight city in there,
leather and paper and dust,
where it had eaten itself a home.” (Silverfish, Moth)
or
“…summon the spirits of bumpo and hot buttered rum,
brown Betty with toast in her hair, and an aura of nutmeg and ginger,
the blue blazer, an ectoplasm of flaming brandy…” (Wassail)
or, a final example, celebrating English placenames,
“At Queen Dart tussocky ponies browsed among the primroses,
and we passed Upton Hellions and Pancrasweek
in a loosening of the air, an erosion of all those accretions
of cottages, hedges, and churches, of names and stones.
Before us was simple blue, and Washaway, Stoptide, Pityme.” (South and West)
A lovely collection, urging us to look again and ponder and inwardly digest.
Many of these poems focus on the natural world, especially the second of the three sections, ‘Micrographia’, in which Francis recreates the wonder he encounters in Robert Hooke’s 1665 series of descriptions of what he discovered about the world of ‘small’ through his microscope.
For me, Francis’ poetry is specially characterised by two practices. The first is his preference for verse that is ordered according, usually, to lines measured by syllable count and arranged in regular stanzas. In spite of this strictness he imposes on himself and his preference not to employ any particular rhythmic pattern, his verse never loses its sense of a forward-moving pulse. The second is his facility with words that embrace the physical world with a descriptive physicality that induce, in my mouthed pronunciation at least, a sensuousness, often a pleasing plumpness, that seems to me to communicate the poet’s pleasure in the various circumambient scapes in which he lives. He is, moreover, an adept practitioner of assonance and consonance, and introduces unusual imagery that allows you to delight in the familiar. For example:
“Remember the punch and peck words had in those days,
the strain of Q in the little finger, the type head
leaning out on its stalk from its semicircular roost…” (Typewriter)
or
“There was a twilight city in there,
leather and paper and dust,
where it had eaten itself a home.” (Silverfish, Moth)
or
“…summon the spirits of bumpo and hot buttered rum,
brown Betty with toast in her hair, and an aura of nutmeg and ginger,
the blue blazer, an ectoplasm of flaming brandy…” (Wassail)
or, a final example, celebrating English placenames,
“At Queen Dart tussocky ponies browsed among the primroses,
and we passed Upton Hellions and Pancrasweek
in a loosening of the air, an erosion of all those accretions
of cottages, hedges, and churches, of names and stones.
Before us was simple blue, and Washaway, Stoptide, Pityme.” (South and West)
A lovely collection, urging us to look again and ponder and inwardly digest.
June 2, 2020
Something of a poetic miscellanea in which Matthew Francis celebrates the seemingly endless variety of English words, dialect and place names. In less accomplished hands this could become wearisome, but for the most part Francis keeps a fast paced tempo in his poetry. More than most books, this is a volume that must be read aloud. To read silently would be to miss its purpose.
Two poems - A Charm for Earwigs and Elixirs - set a more incantatory tone to the work, suggesting that, most particularly the third section, could be read not simply as an exploration of dialect words but as something more magical. Indeed, his paean to fireworks, Devil among the Taylors, managed to invoke in me a taste and smell of childhood bonfire nights that was quite palpable.
The middle section, a poetic imagining of Hooke's Micrographia, has a different feel to it: charming, rather a charm, he nicely balances the scientist's precision with the poet's imagination.
Just occasionally, I felt that some of the language slipped into poetic cliché, although given the riotous abandon with which he throws words around, that is probably inevitable. Well worth a second and third read.
Two poems - A Charm for Earwigs and Elixirs - set a more incantatory tone to the work, suggesting that, most particularly the third section, could be read not simply as an exploration of dialect words but as something more magical. Indeed, his paean to fireworks, Devil among the Taylors, managed to invoke in me a taste and smell of childhood bonfire nights that was quite palpable.
The middle section, a poetic imagining of Hooke's Micrographia, has a different feel to it: charming, rather a charm, he nicely balances the scientist's precision with the poet's imagination.
Just occasionally, I felt that some of the language slipped into poetic cliché, although given the riotous abandon with which he throws words around, that is probably inevitable. Well worth a second and third read.
April 11, 2024
This is a lovely collection but may take a few rereads.
In many ways the book is quiet and humble, the poet takes us through an Attenboroughesque tour of the natural world amongst other things.
His word choices are exquisite at times, using a few simple words to conjure delicious description.
I particularly liked the earwig charm and the collective nouns, but found some of the later poems a bit difficult. I think some were a little overworked and in places he’d tried to impress with rarely used words to create clever meanings - but that can fail if the reader gets taken out of the moment and has to use a dictionary.
There were also some poems that felt like lists of what was there before him. There was a crab, and a seahorse, and some fish, and a gull, and the beach, and a sun etc…I like lists but these didn’t work as well for me.
In many ways the book is quiet and humble, the poet takes us through an Attenboroughesque tour of the natural world amongst other things.
His word choices are exquisite at times, using a few simple words to conjure delicious description.
I particularly liked the earwig charm and the collective nouns, but found some of the later poems a bit difficult. I think some were a little overworked and in places he’d tried to impress with rarely used words to create clever meanings - but that can fail if the reader gets taken out of the moment and has to use a dictionary.
There were also some poems that felt like lists of what was there before him. There was a crab, and a seahorse, and some fish, and a gull, and the beach, and a sun etc…I like lists but these didn’t work as well for me.
April 5, 2024
I really liked the central section. It was unique in its content matter, and I liked a few of the poems in the first section. The third section completely went over my head thanks to a language barrier: I barely know the names of flora and fauna in Dutch, let alone in English. Next to that language barrier (I could have looked up every plant and animal he mentioned, I just did not do this) I am not a big fan of canticles or lengthy use of imagery in poems that because of my lack of knowledge, tend to feel like they are skirting the edge of purple prose.
July 18, 2020
This book would be enjoyed by people who love the word play and native names of flowers, plants and animals. The poems absolutely luxuriate in this, but for me didn't dig any deeper. Each poem felt like another excuse to go through a list of fanciful names and general wordiness. I like poems that are more tactile and sink their teeth in a bit more. Reading one or two is quite enjoyable, but a whole book felt rather repetitive and contrived.
April 20, 2023
Had a really good time reading this, there were 4 poems that I absolutely loved and moments within 8 other poems that either really hit home, were written amazingly or incorporated nature in a really cool and interesting way.
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January 10, 2021A gorgeous celebration of the natural world, the changing seasons, and the foreign treasures of the microscopic kingdom.
April 21, 2021
Lovely, contemplative nature poetry.
Pretty much ticking all my usual boxes, not much to say otherwise!
Pretty much ticking all my usual boxes, not much to say otherwise!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews