A Poet's Pilgrimage
Phillip Higson

The Queen of Chartres

 

          The Middle Ages here seem all-defiant
          As spires reach skyward, stern and uncompliant,
          Scorning the world's ways, vaunting chaster regions
          Where angels throng in well-conducted legions.

         The rich west front abounds in virtuous figures
         Drawn to attention by the Church's rigours;
         But, scanning the devoutly carved main portal,
        One finds at least one less than saintly mortal:

         A lady savouring more of court than cloister
         And dignities to which blue blood could hoist her -
         Allied no doubt with looks that were alluring
         And a sharp wit and deadly skill at scoring.

         Her lofty marriage has not lulled ambition
         For she will toy with men without contrition;
         Those are adulterous eyes, inclined to wander -
         Is that a troubadour or jouster, yonder?

         She can rouse masons to the same devotion,
        Conquering all reason like a heady potion;
         Rare are such charms in a façade so solemn,
        Such curves within the compass of a column!

         Though haloed, she has chosen to besot us
         With hair as sleek and supple as an otter's,
         And mobile sensual lips whose frank expression
         Was shaped by quips and kisses in succession.

          She dresses to enhance each male's awareness
          Of her enclosed but clearly contoured bareness;
          Those sumptuous robes are fashioned to partition
          Her graceful frame and mark each part's position.

          Her bosom's two soft mounds have been divided
          By crafty beads that plunge low (as your eye did!);
          And nothing could more ably scheme to show them
          Than her ingathered bodice just below them.

          Her tummy's pretty realm, discreetly rounded,
          Has been as deftly signposted and bounded:
          At waist a sash, at hips a girdle clinging,
          And what's between can set the spirits singing!

          From that inviting frontier near her haunches,
          A long skirt on its furrowed tumble launches;
          And countless sheer folds, with two dangling tassels,
          Swing as her loins dictate like servile vassals.

          Loose-hanging sleeves applaud no less each gesture
          As this queen rules through face and flesh and vesture;
          With crown on head but full-blown flower on heart,
          For in her state King Cupid knows his part...

          Yet once we step back from her courtly form
          Compulsive piety takes the soul by storm:
          That daunting arch, keen spires on either side,
          And we are lost to earth. Our Queen has died.    

 © Philip Higson 2001

A Poet's Pilgrimage by Philip Higson - a review

 This is a fascinating account, in both prose and verse, of the development of an artistic personality.  The treatment is broadly chronological, with short prose passages introducing key moments in the poet's life set alongside the poems which arose out of these moments and situations.  The poet is an educated and cultured person, and the majority of the poems have a set verse form (many of them sonnets taken from the sequence Sonnets to my Goddess) but Higson shows that he is also master of freer verse forms, as instanced by "Midsummer Cornfield", where he reflects with charm and immediacy on a childhood in Keele village school.

 Higson is keen to show us all the influences at work on him, both positive and negative.  He rails against the destruction of natural beauty and the squalor of modern urban life, is enlivened and then downcast by unrequited love, suffers disillusion as a lecturer, is inspired by the work of poets in other languages and cultures (several of his excellent translations appear in this collection), and finally falls under the spell of the woman he always refers to as his "goddess".  His poems reflect his classical and artistic education, and are noteworthy for their precise and deliberate use of language.  His is a solitary and intensely personal voice, yet he strives always to relate his own experience to mankind in general (with the emphasis on man: especially in his love poems, he speaks as a man to a woman who inspires and fulfils him, not as the universal voice of love which transcends time, space and cultures).

 It is possible to disagree with some of the assumptions that Higson makes.  Many full-time teachers have also been authors over a number of years – this is particularly true of children's writers – and the insistent fascination with his "goddess" is somewhat  impersonal.  Many writers, both men and women, have been inspired to unforeseen heights by the love of another without reducing them to a shrine: for many, the inspiration is mutual, not simply in one direction.  In the same way, Higson insists that his "goddess" can, initially at least, only still speak to him through a spiritual medium.  Without denying the validity and genuineness of these encounters, I suggest that the union of soul-mates across time, space and even death is by no means unique!

 In short, these poems and observations demand that the reader adopts the same viewpoint as the poet, whether it concerns a landscape, his hatred of the treadmill of formal education, or spiritual values.  But it is precisely because of this that the attentive and unprejudiced reader of this absorbing biography will be left with a heightened view of the manner in which so many different strands can come together in the shaping of an individual, creative mind.

 Harold Wonham, member of the Eccleshall Poetry Group

More Poetry on Lit-Net

Where is the life we have lost in living?
Where is wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

                                                                   T S Eliot

Not with

POETRY BOOK OF THE MONTH