Ghosts

by John Fuller

Like the possible phantoms that stalk the dark passageways of its title poem, John Fuller's beautifully lucid collection explores the grey area between life and death. Full of self-deprecating wit and subtle insight, the poems contemplate the inevitability that, when one reaches a certain age, the moment of one's own passing will start to haunt one.In 'Flea Market' there is the pathos of once-loved objects laid out, meaningless, 'on the cobbles for scavengers'. In 'Positions in the Bed', the restless search for a comfortable way to sleep leads to thoughts of the morning when 'we find/ Ourselves absconded from the body's/ Weary roll-call'. And yet, out of this sense of mortality, grows a determination to take delight in the moment, to appreciate fully 'the business of living'.These poems are not only intimate, domestic and often funny, they are uncompromising in the way they confront the huge and unanswerable questions of life. The movement of thought is rendered beautifully concrete in the intricate music of their langauge, and melancholy co-exists with a lightness of touch that builds a moving and humane barricade against 'life's brevity/ And it's insignificance'.Shortlisted for the Whitbread Award for Poetry.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 16, 2004

About the author

John Fuller is an English poet, author and critic. He is an Emeritus Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was Tutor in English.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I plucked this from the outdoor Honesty Bookshop shelves at Hay Castle in Hay-on-Wye back in September. I’d only read Fuller’s Flying to Nowhere, years ago, and not gotten much out of it, so I’m glad I tried his work again. These poems were wonderful and, to my surprise, the book is a signed copy (for just £1!). Even though the main themes are ageing and death, the verse feels vivacious rather than melancholy – it helps that the long sequence “Happy” is about a new baby. There is a sense of multiple familial generations: poems entitled “Great-grandfather” and “Grandfather,” and “We should give thanks to be living with infants. / They wake so early that it is still / Yesterday, and the house is still.”

Fuller marks what would have been his father’s 90th birthday in “Dates,” and in “Prescience” he muses on whether people get a premonition of their day of death – “To mourn throughout your life / That unknown day when you / Wake up for the last time / Is quite impossible” – taking as an example Virginia Woolf and the journal entries she wrote on 28 March for the years before she took her life. There are several beautiful reflections on the seasons. I especially liked “Flea Market,” set in Brussels and pondering the traces a life leaves behind: “All these objects that we believe / Define us: they ache already with / Our love, and their forgottenness.”

This is only 4 stars instead of 5 because (as happens so often with poetry collections) there are 5–10 poems that washed over me without leaving any impression, so the very high quality wasn’t sustained throughout.