The Mara Crossing
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Product Description
Review
'Her poems and essays are a lyrical tribute to the instincts and whims that catalyse movement, and the trials and beauties that come with motion' --The Economist
'Magnificent poems...a triumph of imagistic ingenuity'
--Guardian
`A vertiginous compendium, a prodigy, a book of wonders: it is Montaigne's and Darwin's 21st-century child' --Independent
'Magnificent poems...a triumph of imagistic ingenuity'
--Guardian
`A vertiginous compendium, a prodigy, a book of wonders: it is Montaigne's and Darwin's 21st-century child' --Independent
Book Description
In ninety richly varied poems and illuminating prose interludes, Ruth Padel's original new book weaves science, myth, wild nature and human history to conjure a world created and sustained by migration.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The Mara Crossing is where the wildebeest reach the last stage of their migration from Kenya to Tanzania, the dangerous mass swim across the Mara river. This becomes a central image for this "major meditation on migration" (Jo Shapcott) . I can't think what to call the genre that houses this unusual mixture of prose - often poetic - and poems which often pluck words from biological texts:
... Protozoa, copepods
and krill, a ragtag army
preyed on by larger predators still -
the bioluminescence brigade:
lantern-fish glowing cold
catoptromantic rays,
three hundred species
of dense packed cephalopods;
and hatchet-fish
following their own fixed upward gaze.
(from "Nocturne", alliteration and rhythm helping fit the words for their new home.)
At times the structure has similarities with a post-Wagnerian opera, rich arias and recitative, plotless (like Glass's "Satyagraha") but with compulsive leitmotifs. The prose passages are built on inductive logic rather than tightly argued syllogisms. They are the bright pickings that sparkle in a jackdaw's nest, the fruits of such extensive reading that one almost feels there should be a bibliography. The Haitian-born Audubon's first banding of birds in America throws the mist net of migration over birds and humans; and Lowenstein, another migrant, discovers as late as 1961 that living organisms contain the mineral magnetite in their bodies, allowing some to use Earth's magnetic field to guide their movements.
The overall theme is that "Home and migration belong together, two sides of the same ancient coin. Home is something we make, then things change, either in ourselves or in the world, we lose home and have to go elsewhere." This is the plotline of many stories and myths as well as of our home planet's biological and ecological history, from Ulysses to the forced exile of the Chagossians from their islands so that US bombers can flourish as an alien invasive species that easily pushes out the defenceless natives. That example is not in the book, but shows the power of migration to provide illustrative analogies for many human predicaments.
In one way this review is provisional. This book will reward re-readings, as a first one makes clear. Praise too for the fine cover and binding: physically it is a pleasure to carry and read, ideally when on a journey.
... Protozoa, copepods
and krill, a ragtag army
preyed on by larger predators still -
the bioluminescence brigade:
lantern-fish glowing cold
catoptromantic rays,
three hundred species
of dense packed cephalopods;
and hatchet-fish
following their own fixed upward gaze.
(from "Nocturne", alliteration and rhythm helping fit the words for their new home.)
At times the structure has similarities with a post-Wagnerian opera, rich arias and recitative, plotless (like Glass's "Satyagraha") but with compulsive leitmotifs. The prose passages are built on inductive logic rather than tightly argued syllogisms. They are the bright pickings that sparkle in a jackdaw's nest, the fruits of such extensive reading that one almost feels there should be a bibliography. The Haitian-born Audubon's first banding of birds in America throws the mist net of migration over birds and humans; and Lowenstein, another migrant, discovers as late as 1961 that living organisms contain the mineral magnetite in their bodies, allowing some to use Earth's magnetic field to guide their movements.
The overall theme is that "Home and migration belong together, two sides of the same ancient coin. Home is something we make, then things change, either in ourselves or in the world, we lose home and have to go elsewhere." This is the plotline of many stories and myths as well as of our home planet's biological and ecological history, from Ulysses to the forced exile of the Chagossians from their islands so that US bombers can flourish as an alien invasive species that easily pushes out the defenceless natives. That example is not in the book, but shows the power of migration to provide illustrative analogies for many human predicaments.
In one way this review is provisional. This book will reward re-readings, as a first one makes clear. Praise too for the fine cover and binding: physically it is a pleasure to carry and read, ideally when on a journey.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Migration Made theWorld
2 Mar 2012
Format:Hardcover
The Mara Crossing is where the wildebeest reach the last stage of their migration from Kenya to Tanzania, the dangerous mass swim across the Mara river. That becomes a central image for what a fellow British poet has justly called a "major meditation on migration" (Jo Shapcott) .
Padel's prose essays often summarise a biological topic, like land migration:
"From elephants to emperor penguins, there are hundreds of different kinds of land migration. Crowned lemurs in the deciduous forests of northern Madagascar migrate for miles over eroded mountain limestone karst. European toads struggle several challenging miles over rough ground to find a mate. In upland Sumatra, herds of up to a hundred bearded pigs on their annual migration for food travel at night on paths they have used for centuries, then retreat into thickets to rest in the day and hide from tigers. In North America the reindeer or caribou migrate across lakes and mountains, travelling up to 3,000 miles a year to find food, avoid cold and escape biting insects." (pp 80-81).
In the sequences of poems which follow each essay, the same theme is dealt with through sparkling images, in this case like a sequence from a wildlife film:
"Did I dream them up? Those lemurs on late-night TV
pelting for days, striped tails like silver-and-black
bananas held high; the babies leaping too
or missing their step and falling one side or the other,
furry limbs bouncing through fourteen
thousand metres of drop, through turrets
of tropical forest, lianas wrestling them down
in true no-holds-barred kung fu to the jaws
of pythons below. It's a hurtle for miles
over limestone pinnacles, raw knife-edges
scraping the sky, in a race for a safe place -
the good place to breed, feed and rest." ( "Blade Runners of Madagascar" p93).
The poems are the result of extensive field experience and of academic reading. One almost feels there should be a bibliography to help access her sources for such cameos as the Haitian-born Audubon's first banding of birds in America, linking birds and humans in the mist net of migration; and Lowenstein, another migrant, discovering as late as 1961 that living organisms contain the mineral magnetite in their bodies, allowing some to use Earth's magnetic field to guide their movements.
The overall theme is that "Home and migration belong together, two sides of the same ancient coin. Home is something we make, then things change, either in ourselves or in the world, we lose home and have to go elsewhere." This is the plotline of many stories and myths as well as of our home planet's biological and ecological history.
Padel's prose essays often summarise a biological topic, like land migration:
"From elephants to emperor penguins, there are hundreds of different kinds of land migration. Crowned lemurs in the deciduous forests of northern Madagascar migrate for miles over eroded mountain limestone karst. European toads struggle several challenging miles over rough ground to find a mate. In upland Sumatra, herds of up to a hundred bearded pigs on their annual migration for food travel at night on paths they have used for centuries, then retreat into thickets to rest in the day and hide from tigers. In North America the reindeer or caribou migrate across lakes and mountains, travelling up to 3,000 miles a year to find food, avoid cold and escape biting insects." (pp 80-81).
In the sequences of poems which follow each essay, the same theme is dealt with through sparkling images, in this case like a sequence from a wildlife film:
"Did I dream them up? Those lemurs on late-night TV
pelting for days, striped tails like silver-and-black
bananas held high; the babies leaping too
or missing their step and falling one side or the other,
furry limbs bouncing through fourteen
thousand metres of drop, through turrets
of tropical forest, lianas wrestling them down
in true no-holds-barred kung fu to the jaws
of pythons below. It's a hurtle for miles
over limestone pinnacles, raw knife-edges
scraping the sky, in a race for a safe place -
the good place to breed, feed and rest." ( "Blade Runners of Madagascar" p93).
The poems are the result of extensive field experience and of academic reading. One almost feels there should be a bibliography to help access her sources for such cameos as the Haitian-born Audubon's first banding of birds in America, linking birds and humans in the mist net of migration; and Lowenstein, another migrant, discovering as late as 1961 that living organisms contain the mineral magnetite in their bodies, allowing some to use Earth's magnetic field to guide their movements.
The overall theme is that "Home and migration belong together, two sides of the same ancient coin. Home is something we make, then things change, either in ourselves or in the world, we lose home and have to go elsewhere." This is the plotline of many stories and myths as well as of our home planet's biological and ecological history.
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