Roddy Lumsden - Terrific Melancholy

Roddy Lumsden, Terrific Melancholy (Bloodaxe)

If, contrary to the popular wisdom, we were to judge this book by its cover we would decide it was one of the best ever published. The broken-down jangle-box piano is a baroque study of decripitude redolent of high old times gone by. It is worthy of an award all of its own.

It echoes the mood and theme of much of the book, which is an artful meditation on middle-age in which Roddy Lumsden uses his customary virtuoso talents of diction, cadence, daring form and les mots plus justes which here include haecceity, scotomata, ochlophobic and glisk. So approach it armed with a dictionary or be prepared to struggle.

When Donald Davie suggested a poem was a 'considered utterance', it implied for me that some were more considered than others. Few are more considered than Lumsden's.

These poems might in places have more of a choleric edge than the previous books in which the poet could have been taken as more 'fun-loving' but he points out that,

My kismet was ultimate profundity

and humour just a stepping stone on which I found

myself, wet-shod, light-hearted, momentarily.

But, thankfully, there's not too much of that self-analysis in which poets tend to guide the reader through their poems and tell us what they're up to now. If Lumsden is ready to renounce 'wit' as comedy, it remains central to his work in its other meaning of ingenuity.

The long title poem - a 'sequence' if we must- is outstanding. In an age that might hopefully be gradually realizing that poems can go over onto the next page, it is a genuine test of a real poet to sustain something as long as 360 lines. Many can manage it to nearly the bottom of page one without mishap but this accumulation of scenes from an infatuation maintains a steady, yes, melancholic, music throughout and builds consistently into a powerful set of tableaux full of masterly verses and beautiful, well-made reflections.

The poems in the final section come from travels in America and are similarly haunted by memory, age and sometimes a sense of loss,

As in dreams we hold past lovers

who have lived on half-heartedly, and tell

us so, these coach wheels hold the road

in brief but constant purchase, the creek

holds course, sees through its downbeat drama

and in the dreamt embrace we say, I know, I know.

Earlier, in Duology,

History's dayjob

is to usher us closer to its shady marquee.

And so we age: easier to love, harder to desire.

In the American poems, this pieces in the first section and the long poem, one can hear the world-weary tone of Kleinzahler bringing an exciting and powerful eudition to bear on morose, less deceived thoughts. It is a sombre book in theme but never in its method that continues in Lumsden's customary rich and wide-ranging compass of thought.

Roddy seemed to want to downplay expectations of the book on an internet forum a few months ago. Such modesty was not necessary.