Penguin Canada has now re-issued that book, and Beyond This Dark House is now available in a paperback edition for those of us who missed out on its original release. I have read all of Mr. Kay's novels, and have found them to be almost uniformly excellent, but they have also shaped my expectations as to the nature of his work.
Having expectations is probably as bad as making assumptions about somebody's work, as they can sometimes have little or nothing to do with reality. In this case the only expectation that stands up is that the poetry in Beyond This Dark House is as good as Mr. Kay's prose, but it has a style and flavour all of its own. While his novels are intricate and elaborate puzzles, resplendent with detailed characters and vivid locations, his poems are far more austere while not surrendering an any of the intelligence or depth of his prose.
One poem that I keep coming back to as an example of the differences between his work in the two genres is "The Narrow Escape". The poem sets out the details of how a woman was fortunate enough to avoid marrying someone who already had someone he loves more. The man in question was a poet, and his mistress who he loved most was his poetry. But there is a wonderful bite of irony to the poem that makes you wonder about the women and what she thinks love is in the first place.
You see, "Because he was such as could spend a whole night, centuries from sleep, crafting a poem to reclaim the afternoon when they first met, she fell in love with him. But when he actually did so..." It's all very well and good to be sensitive and poetic, but if I'm not going to be the centre of your attention all the time, you can't love me and I don't want you. Imagine, leaving me alone in bed so he could get up and write about me?: "...she burst into angry tears, crying: 'How could I not have seen how destructive you are?'"
While this poem is a nice piece of satire, Kay can also write some beautiful descriptive poems. In the third part of the book he has collected a number of poems that he has written based on various characters from literature and myth. What I liked about them is that he created pictures of them that fit the characters perfectly.
"Malvolio" is about the uptight butler of the same name from Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night. He is the worst sort of puritanical prude, and in the poem he compares the fun that other characters are having to the torturous fires of hell. He flees back to his austere, cold room, where he cleans himself of the stain of their sin with prayer. Then he falls into the sleep of the righteous and has dreams about himself and his mistress.
- My room is cold, my anguish sharp as icicles. One day trumpets will proclaim our victory. I salve my heart with prayer...I walk amid gardens of precisely trimmed hedges where she awaits me, unveiled and alone. My garters are yellow as I sigh my way back into splendour.
Kay has created the perfect character study of the repressed Puritan, who on the surface is all proper and prim, but he's just like everyone else underneath it all, a normal human being with desires. In both "Malvolio," and "The Narrow Escape," Kay shows that he has knack for creating intelligent and witty poetry that is sharp and to the point. He is able to describe those moments he wants to tell us about with grace and style and no small amount of humour.
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