POETRY: The Looking HouseBy Fred Marchant Graywolf Press, 61pp. $15
THE STARTING point of Fred Marchant's third collection, and one that is reprised and probed throughout, is the decision he made while serving as a young US marine in Vietnam to leave the US armed forces as a conscientious objector: "The war in Viet Nam still ongoing, but I was well out of it,/ as far as I could get. I went in/ to Donegal once a week for newspapers and wine gums./ For rent I helped John milk the cows . . ." ( Ard na Mara).
The pacifist course that Marchant advocates in The Looking Houseis a quiet and private one that follows closely in the footsteps of William Stafford, a second World War conscientious objector who in his celebrated poetry and prose advocated such a path. Like Stafford before him, Marchant revisits his own past – from his childhood to his readings in classical literature – to trace the origins of his own doubts. Particularly in the splendid first and second sections of this collection, one feels the sensation of experiencing American public and private life during the 1950s and 1960s in glittering slow motion.
Whereas Stafford found solace and attained knowledge while working with other conscientious objectors in CO camps during the second World War, Marchant found his place in a remote farming community in Co Donegal, beginning the process of attaining a deeper understanding of the decision he had made, one that, to many of his fellow countrymen, rendered him an outcast: "I wrote in a lined spiral notebook as much as I could. "I wanted to tell why I joined/ and how I came to quit the war. The feeling the words gave me was as the light did the night before" ( Ard na Mara).
To come to terms with his rejection of an inherited worldview, one that emphasised generic conformity in personal conduct and a strident anti-communism in foreign policy, Marchant was forced to confront his inheritance and eventually, he felt, to remake himself as a human being:
"I would teach my heart how to be a heart –/ help the doors open wide,/ invite the tall shadows to peek in/ like curious strangers, the chambers brimming over – with them" ( Nobody Too).
To achieve this complex task and to render it into poetry, Marchant makes exuberant use of a variety of free verse forms and these allow him to explore the world of his American upbringing from multiple directions.
The Looking Houseis a measured, elegant and thoughtful collection of lyrics that is always a delight to read. The work is frequently moving and underlined by a hard-earned but modest wisdom.
Marchant’s is an early work in a process – sure to continue long into the future – in which American writers take stock of their country during the years of the Bush zeitgeist.
A master craftsman of the poetic line with a fine ear for the music to be found in everyday language, and a veteran and outsider, Marchant is well suited to take on this task. Like Stafford's Down in My Heart, The Looking Houseis an important work of literary witness.
Eamonn Wall's most recent book is A Tour of Your Country, published by Salmon in 2008