The Weather In Japan

by Michael Longley

. 2000, bright clean copy, name on endpaper no other markings, Professional booksellers since 1981

Genres: Poetry, Ireland

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 27, 2000

About the author

Michael Longley was a Northern Irish poet. Following his death, the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, called Longley "a peerless poet".

Reviews

[Ron Bernas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this collection best, I think. So many pages bent over, meaning those were poems I want to read again. Here's one.

The Waterfall
If you were to read my poems, all of them, I mean,
My life's work, at the one sitting, in the one place,
Let it be here by this half-hearted waterfall
That allows each pebbly basin its separate say,
Damp stones and syllables, then, as it grows dark
And you go home past overgrown vineyards and
Chestnut trees, suppliers once of crossbeams, moon-
shaped nuts, flour, and crackly stuffing for mattresses,
Leave them here, on the page, in your mind's eye, lit
Like the fireflies at the waterfall, a wall of stars.

[zuzu · Rating 4 out of 5]

picked this up in the poetry library of manchester to kill some time, and was so surprised at how much i enjoyed it. he uses repetition in some interesting ways i didn’t always think were effective, but i loved the style of his lyric and what he referenced in the poems. also enjoyed the use of irish and scots language mixed into the poems. my faves were broken dishes, the altar cloth, night time, and the well at tully.

[Ida Boardman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very beautiful:)

[Irene · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much unfamiliar vocabulary and references for me to really immerse myself and enjoy the collection. This includes what the author calls "Scots (or Ulster Scots) words" such as peerie-heedit (which means "with a spinning top for a head") as well as words that I assume are common enough in Ireland but not elsewhere ("butterwort" was one that came up in multiple poems, which I guess refers to carnivorous plants??). There are also a bunch of classical references, particularly to Greek figures.

[Marcus Hobson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Longley died a couple of weeks ago and until that point I had never heard of him. Just after his death there were photos of Longley with Seamus Heaney, one of my favourite poets. And as if my magic, or some kind of fate, there was a book of his verse for a couple of dollars in the next charity shop I visited.

What a revelation. What wonderful use of language to the the reader to unexpected places.
I have picked out four poems to quote from to give a sense of what and how Langley wrote. For me to try to describe it and make sense of it would be too difficult, and never do the talent of the man any justice. Listen to the sentiments and the choice of words and the formation of the lines. All these are very good.
The first is a short piece called A Prayer:

In our country they are desecrating churches.
May the rain that pours in our into the font.
Because no snowflake ever falls in the wrong place,
May snow lie on the altar like an altar cloth.

The second piece is two verses long and called The Branch:

The artist in my father transformed the diagonal
Crack across the mirror on our bathroom cabinet
Into a branch: that was his way of mending things,
A streak of brown paint, dabs of green, an accident
That sprouted leaves,
awakening the child in me
To the funny faces he pulls when he is shaving.
He wears a vest, white buttons at his collarbone.
Two halves of my father's face are joining up.
His soapy nostrils disappear among the leaves.

Many of the poems have a classical theme or allusion. Langley read Classics at Trinity College Dublin, and this erudition shows through in his verse. In the longer poem Etruria, Langley seems to bombard us with a whole series of images from his trip to that part of Italy. Here are just four verses from the ten in total:

You can find me under the sellotape map fold
Stuck with dog hairs, and close to a mulberry bush
The woman tended, coddling between her breasts
The silkworms' filaments, vulnerable bobbins.

Was it a humming bird or a hummingbird moth
Mistook my navel for some chubby convolvulus?
Paolo steps from his casa like an astronaut
And stoops with smoky bellows among his bees.

Gin, acacia honey, last year's sloes, crimson
Slipping in gravity like the satellite that swims
In and out of the hanging hornet-traps, then
Jukes between midnight planes and shooting stars.

The trout that dozed in a perfect circle wear
Prison grey in the fridge, bellies sky-coloured
Next to the butter dish's pattern, traveller's joy,
Old man's beard when it seeds, feathery plumes.

And finally, from the very last page of the book, the page beyond the notes and acknowledgements, I found these short four lines. No title and all in italics:

There's a dip in the mattress where I sleep.
Rise out of your hollow hours before me
Every morning, and on the last morning
Tuck me in behind our windbreak of books.

I'm not sure what it is about these four lines, but I find them magical - perhaps it is calling the shivering towers of books that surround the poet and the reader's beds a windbreak. There is a sadness too, a finality in the lines, which leave us with a sadness.
I need to find more poems by Michael Langley.

[Elliot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short lyric poems (sometimes haiku) explores a link between countries.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

I'll read more Longley this was interesting at best one would say waves through violence of the first world war but a lot of waterfalls and Irishing, even Heaney seems to have pinched a phrase or two from Michael , I'm thinking of Electric Light

[scarlettraces · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5)