"An opening sequence of eight roughly sonnet-like poems mourning the Baltimore poet Joseph Harrison contrasts the American's dying courage with the poet's English reticence. You talk. I will but warn you, Joe, / talk is not first nature. I blame Dad, / his silence fathomless. I tried. An awkwardness relegates grief back to its private place, giving way to alternatives sometimes hopeful or outright hilarious."
"In English Elegies John Berryman appears as a staggeringly drunk spirit guide, advising against the melancholic pull of home. That place was done for, England, and so on, / John said. Wisely, Motion resolves, High time / it is that I, like everyone, set out to die alone."
"The toxic grammar of home mediates a different form of filial elegy in Rabbitbox, where male violence terrorises the boy, or boy-rabbit. Here we mourn not the dead but those prevented from living: a young mother and her child besieged by a shadowy husband and father."
Andrew Motion's Gravity Archives continues his lifelong engagement with death and loss, themes rooted in his mother's fatal riding accident. The collection marks an evolution from the ambivalent emigrant of his previous work to a more grounded perspective on mortality. Opening with eight sonnet-like poems mourning Baltimore poet Joseph Harrison, Motion contrasts American courage with English emotional reticence. The collection progresses through sequences mourning family members and features John Berryman as a spiritual guide, ultimately embracing solitary acceptance of death. Motion balances grief with humor and hope, moving beyond private anguish toward broader human understanding. Wayne Holloway-Smith's Rabbitbox offers contrasting elegies for the living, mourning those prevented from flourishing by domestic male violence.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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