Black Cat Bone

I'm a big fan of John Burnside's poetry. So when I heard that this latest collection had won the 2011 Forward Prize, I had great hopes for a thoroughly engrossing read. What I got instead was bafflement and wispiness.

The collection opens with its strongest poem, the eerie and often disturbing "The Fair Chase". The poem recounts the story of a nameless hunter, 'bound to the old ways, lost in a hand-me-down greatcoat // and last among equals', pursuing an unseen quarry 'every day, in every season'. The group is a motley one, including 'blacksmiths and lawyers, orchardmen, // butchers in waiting', so bound to their quest, that 'when one man sickened and died, / another would take his place'.

So far, so good. And the poem unwinds its tale show more through ninety triplet stanzas, working by hint and suggestion rather than direct reference. A "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" brought on to land and poured through the myth of the Wild Hunt, perhaps. There are a few passages that just sing -- the description of the narrator when he finally confronts his prey is both beautiful and horrible, and the skill with which Burnside slows everything down shows an understanding of suspense that film makers would kill for. The poem ends in mystery, but with a strong sense of the matters at stake here -- life and death, loss, longing, and the price we pay for all of them. The mystery feels right, because this poem sets the tone for everything to follow, and we turn the page with a certain eagerness to see what will crystalize out of this mist.

And the answer is ... more mist. And fog. And blear. The poems that follow circle around and around, and never actually come to any conclusion. Things are suggested, but never depicted or revealed or made visible. The rest of the book feels like the poems never made it out of the nebulous world of the first draft. Yes, there are lovely lines and images. Burnside has a lovely song to his work. But there's no meat here, nothing tangible. "Nativity", the first poem in the title sequence, begins with fog (literally, as well as metaphorically), and manages to coalesce into the abrupt and shocking realization that you've been reading about a woman dying in childbirth. Again, as the first poem in a sequence, you expect it to set the tone for things to come, and hope rises for some meat, some grit, something real even if brutal. But no. Instead, we have the matter of the first poem largely repeated in the next, but with yet more murk ('the secret / Nineveh of back rooms in the dark.'). "Death Room Blues" gives way to a poem which again begins interestingly ('I found a bobcat dying in the road / and stole the tattered remnant / of its soul') but quickly retreats back into obscurity ('I was the Alpha ... I was the Omega'). The poems reach timid fingers towards some sort of profundity, but never manage to lift above abstraction and murk.

Yes, I'm being harsh. He's a poet I admire, and expect a lot of. Yes, the poems have been widely praised. And it may be that there is something profound going on here that I'm just not tuning in to. But to me this reads like a book that the author doesn't believe in, that goes nowhere, and that hasn't been finished. In the words of the collection's final piece, "From the Chinese" (a good poem);
'this is the time of year
when nothing to see
gives way ...'
"Nothing to see" sums things up rather well. And while other critics have quoted the final line of the poem as praise, saying that Black Cat Bone leaves them 'dumbstruck, ready to be persuaded', it just leaves me struck dumb. And definitely not persuaded. show less

Gorse bones and Samson’s weakness: begins with and follows corridors of remarkable insight, John Burnside is a maverick; a harrowing genius. There are few books of mention in the cannon of poetry that deserves the honors of top 50 poetry books in existence; I believe this would bode some heft among the ranks of that listomania. Black Cat Bone, named after a hoodoo talisman, is a quandary of not affairs of love perchance but brooding old gods of worship.

Most popular poet with the guardian.co.uk/books team, we interviewed him when he won the Forward prize for poetry in October 2011.