Lipstick [Paperback]

 

 

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My name is Russell Kane. I am a stand-up comic, and I couldn't be more biased about this poet if Maggie Butt herself were standing next to me with Keats's quill held at my temple. However, this fondness for one of the few human beings to whom I am genuinely indebted for my own creativity in comedy and writing, is irrelevant when one comes to behold these nuggets of poignancy themselves. Each poem is a compact metaphysical delight, to coin a phrase. Some of them feel humorous yet leave you strangely moist-eyed and moved. Some of them strike you sadly, yet a chuckle issues forth. Read them; an exquisite box of delights: humourous, warm, beautiful and utterly human. Enjoy.

I've been eagerly awaiting the publication of 'Lipstick' ever since I discovered Maggie Butt's excellent website, www.lifesoup.net, by chance a couple of years ago. It was worth the wait.

I measure my fondness for a collecton of poetry by the number of page corners sacrilegiously turned down by the time I have reached the end. Those dog ears help me find again poems I've especially enjoyed and know I'll want to reread or share with others. Among the twelve marked for future reference in my already well-thumbed copy of 'Lipstick' is the one that first saw me surfing the Net in search of more of Maggie Butt's brilliance. 'May' appeared in a leaflet that I picked up at my doctor's surgery, of all places, having had its first outing in an anthology called 'In the Waiting Room'. And this - the poem and the mundanity of the place in which I first read it - exemplifies, for me, the essence of her appeal: she has the skill to reel any reader in with accessible language and universal themes - and then land him with an acute observation or an apposite turn of phrase. I, for one, am 'hooked'. This collection is a magnificent debut, witty and wistful, poignant and pertinent by turns, and Maggie Butt deserves the widest acclaim.

Maggie Butt's is a first full collection that clearly has been in the making for quite a few years. This shows in two ways: firstly, because the poems are beautifully executed and thoughtfully formed; and secondly because they deal with experiences which have clearly accumulated in the poet's mind over a considerable period. The very first poem in the book entitled `Stonemason' shows a sculptural approach that reflects in the form:



I carve a head, shaping a nostril for breath,

though nobody will see it, high above the nave.

I am uncomfortable and scared of heights

but careful in each chisel-chip

tongue caught between my teeth.



I have to confess that when reviewing poetry I look for a flair for imagery, a capacity for empathy and a quality of thoughtfulness in a poet. A couple of lines like `shrugging on cold air at the/ stage door like an overcoat.' or `lizards, cocktail-bright and quick', betoken the first gift; while the following, imagining `A fat man in football shirt' off to a football match with his son, shows the second talent:



A dream fulfilled - me and the boy -

his first match, great initiation

into the soaring hope and dark despair

it means to be a man.



While both second and third talents, so to speak, appear in the poem `Heathrow? Heathrow?' in which the poet observes at Leicester Square station `a rabbi on the packed platform' holding up a scrap of paper and `mouths his English mantra Heathrow? Heathrow?'/ as though invoking secret names of God.' The people `surge around him like a tide' but completely ignore him. The poet notices him, though he is `beyond my reach' as she is in a tube train, but with thoughtful insight she writes of those on the platform who might help the man but don't, `This isn't prejudice. This is its guilty twin, indifference.'

In the poem `e-mail', humour emerges out of exasperation as `the junk mail blossomed like a fungus/ a daily chore of skimming off the scum/ to find the meaty matter.' And the poet says, `This must be what it's like for God./ "You have six billion unread messages."// He isn't dead; he's just logged off.' The one other quality that I look for in poems is rhythm, and its variation music. In Maggie Butt's poetry there is a cautiously-structured quiet music. It is a music wholly appropriate to a poet of alert observation coupled with an unfractured decency of thought that is not so common in poetry today. By `decency', of course, I mean what George Orwell meant by the term, not Alvarez's `gentility principle', but that sense of cool proportion that presages wisdom. Finally, I should mention that Lipstick contains a wider range of personal experience, beautifully metamorphosed, than this review may suggest.

WILLIAM OXLEY

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