Malcolm Hacksley
SOLSTICE by Don Maclennan (Snailpress/Scottish Cultural Press, R49)
Don Maclennan is intensely respectful towards words, his own and those of others, and uses them remarkably sparingly. The subjects and ideas in these poems call forth a spontaneous response, but the Maclennan response is rigorous in its self-control.
Perhaps it is true that “songs live only in their flesh”, but this poet takes no licence to indulge them. Hardly a line runs to more than six or seven brief words, perhaps no more than two or three poems have as many as 30 lines. Words, he demonstrates, are to be treasured: they help “to keep residual humanity intact”.
The opening poem, Mandate, states his purpose quite clearly: “Our job is to find/ what keeps us whole”. But if part of our consciousness includes being “an animal who … knows/ he is going to die”, there is another part that thrills to the sense that “we live in paradise” and, significantly, in the poem entitled The Truth: “we do not want another world/ to undermine this one”. The natural world and the world of words are inseparable in the poetic consciousness: the universe “talks to me like an inner spring”; “[I] remake myself through language”.
So which solstice does Don Maclennan find himself at? In a volume where the title of every poem has been chosen with exquisite care, the name of the collection as a whole is ambiguous: at midsummer, Maclennan senses the coming autumnal decline; at midwinter, he awaits his resurrection in the spring.
A pervasive awareness of the passing of time, of declining powers, of mortality, of a suspected meaninglessness; and in scintillating juxtaposition the constant surprise of an unbidden, rejuvenating and time-free joy which gives the lie to the perceived threat of annihilation: “there is a fruitful/ energetic enterprise, mercifully/ beyond our making and control”.