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\u00a0A Brief and Biased History of Love\u00a0<\/em>by Alan Humm. \u00a39.\u00a0 Culture Matters.\u00a0\u00a0ISBN\u00a0 978-1-912710-55-3. Reviewed by Patricia McCarthy<\/p>\n This interesting debut collection from novelist Alan Humm merits reading and re-reading with its fresh, startlingly original images and equally original angles on ordinary lives, losses and loves.<\/p>\n The collection is introduced by what amounts to a three-page essay by Fran Lock. This is so articulate, so probing and detailed that it has to be wondered if it should have remained on its own as a wonderfully incisive review. The problem here is that the reader reads this almost overwhelming, detailed build-up to the poems to follow that, when the poems are encountered, with such expectations, they can only seem thinner and more slight than they should. Most readers don\u2019t like having their opinions on a text dictated to, especially as poetry is elastic in meaning and therefore each poem is different to every reader. This is my only caveat.<\/p>\n Humm is billed as a poet who explores and represents working-class masculinities. I think this is to focus too narrowly, and too trendily, on his work. Yes his memories in these poems are those of a typical English male. The emotion seems somewhat restrained, withheld, which, in an ironic sense, perhaps gives the poems their power. It is a recognisable world of pubs, bars, squats, clubs with \u2018girls sitting in a row\u2019, village halls, estates, a mill, graveyard, river, a textile factory, \u00a0a supermarket which , in one poem, is visible in the playful rhyming couplet: \u2018late at night\/ like Santa\u2019s grotto in the light\u2019, \u2018suburban nothingness\u2019 circumscribed even from the very first poem by walls.<\/p>\n The walls of the persona\u2019s body become the walls of his life viewed with the long-angled lens of memory in different lights. Within these parameters, the reader is confronted with the poet\u2019s experiences of a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father, a feisty mother who \u2018can make a fist\/with her whole body\u2019, and is capable of having it off with another man, forgiveable perhaps when her husband \u2018with lamplight dribbling down his chin\u2019 who \u2018looked like someone\u2019s dog\u2019 tried to rape her. There is adolescent fumbling with the opposite sex \u2026 as the poet or persona balances between \u2018fear\u2019 and \u2018love\u2019. \u2018Love\u2019 of course is what has to be learned in order for it to be defined \u2013 definitely distinct from plain male \u2018desire \u2019as in the poem \u2018Julie (again)\u2019. His adolescent self idolises Julie: \u2018She was so blonde\/ that I could hardly bear to look at her\u2019, but he quickly realises \u2018she was just a girl\u2019\u2026 \u2018bewildered by the ferocity of my desire\u2019. He can\u2019t quite define the word \u2018desire\u2019 except to say it was \u2018like a dull endless explosion\u2019. Yet he comes close to defining \u2018love\u2019 earlier as \u2018that dark shape in your heart\/ that comes to claim you as its own\u2019. He also can\u2019t quite define \u2018the thing that music names\u2019 and he wishes fervently for \u2018decent tunes\/ and a bright millwheel for a heart\u2019.<\/p>\n Similes and metaphors abound which make the reader sit up with their accuracy. This collection is haunted by the \u2018disgrace\u2019 of an alcoholic father who links to the theme of violence. He is matter-of-factly described as he \u2018wielded the leather\/ and the bucket like a matador\u2019 but in the evening he \u2018was doubled\/ in the funhouse mirrors of the pub\u2019. At times he \u2018will upend the wine bottle, like ketchup\u2019. His father\u2019s voice is always a threat: \u2018It ebbs continually,\/ its timbre mussed by distance into a dull\/downpour in the room below\u2019. Even the silences are \u2018contaminated\u2019: \u2018They all contain my father\u2019s murmur\/like a river does a crocodile\u2019.<\/p>\n No wonder, then, that the friends addressed individually and fondly in a clutch of poems offer some relief. Yet what serves mainly as a counterpoint to the monstrous father is popular music which acts as a constant recitative throughout, whether it be made by an amateur band of youngsters \u2018whose notes\u2019\u2026 \u2018had the breadth, the dull\/intransigence of mud\u2019. Even his own voice, he realises in retrospect, was \u2018its own worst enemy;\/\/each song weighed down\/ by an acoustic like dull water\u2019. \u00a0On the other hand, the voice of John Lennon, when the poet was a boy, made him rise from \u2018Dumb skies\u2019\u2026 \u2018amplified, like a balloon\u2019. Yet it is imperfect and perfect music that gives the poet a more wanted home than the one he has. He envies the house of his upmarket friend David who plays the cello: \u2018Everywhere \u2013 books.\/\u00a0 The house was built on them\/in the same way that a mind\/constructs itself upon\/its memories\u2019 \u2013 as Humm\u2019s mind does in these poems.<\/p>\n Learning is a theme too: in the above poem he says \u2018I learned that time\/conspires to keep you\/in the places that you love\u2019 \u2013 just as in \u2018Teaching at Addington\u2019 he humbly acknowledges: \u2018Which of us,\/me or the kids,\/ was teaching who\u2019 pointing to the fact that teaching is the best way of learning, even to \u2018become yourself\/ when you transcend yourself\u2019. Humm\u2019s wisdom is apparent too in the haunting \u2018Villanelle\u2019 which elaborates on \u2018Within the part of us that never grows\/ the future is the past in different clothes\u2019.<\/p>\n His friend Sam on the drums has \u2018hands that begin to sing\u2019 as his poems do when read, and re-read to give them their full understated rhythm and impact. In the poem \u2018How to love music\u2019, Humm states: \u2018If rhythm was a liquid\/ then a voice would be its grain\u2019. And maybe in this collection he achieves just this: his voice the grain in the unswerving subtle rhythm of his verse.<\/p>\n Patricia McCarthy\u00a0edited <\/em>Agenda poetry journal for more than two decades. She won the National Poetry Competition in 2012 and has been a runner-up twice. Her poems are published widely and she has several collections to her name, the latest full collection, published a year ago, being\u00a0<\/em>Hand in Hand\u00a0(London Magazine Editions\/Agenda Editions) based on Tristan and Yseult, and the pamphlet\u00a0<\/em>A Ghosting in Ukraine\u00a0(dare-Gale Press, 2023).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0A Brief and Biased History of Love\u00a0by Alan Humm. \u00a39.\u00a0 Culture Matters.\u00a0\u00a0ISBN\u00a0 978-1-912710-55-3. Reviewed by Patricia McCarthy This interesting debut collection from novelist Alan Humm merits reading…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":371,"featured_media":16738,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1660],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/371"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}