
The Breaking Hour, Kevin Crossley-Holland (London: Enitharmon Press, 2015)
‘Wyde in this world wondres to hear.’ Â (Boyhood)
It was by chance that I met Kevin Crossley-Holland, as he was one of the English speaking authors the Morges Book Festival lined up last year.  We got talking and somehow zoomed in on the stories of things – he pointed me to some lines that resonated.
This pierced coin,
is it an affirmation of Empire,
a talisman, a love token, or simply
the difference between a full stomach
and going to bed hungry? (Lifelines)
Love-knot, dovetail, harvest bow:
they’ve waited all their lives for you
and wish you everything they want.  (Translations)

To buy the book
Bookdepository.com – free shipping to many countries.
To buy the book
Amazon.com
Kindle version
Amazon.com
The Breaking Hour is a beautiful tapestry of poems, full of human appreciation and subtlety, in limpid English drawing on deep pools of Anglo-Saxon, reflected in the cover design. It has vivid imagery (‘the glacier’s blue teeth’ – Harald in Byzantium) and arresting lines: ‘No, I never commune with my ancestors before breakfast’ (Communion). But above all, a capacity to capture moments of wonder and the emotions they unlock, reminding us that there may be ‘no distance between actual and numinous’ (Boyhood).
‘Sheer wonder it has happened again
– the same geese, these same acres –
and, crick-necked on our doorsteps,
the sudden surge of wild longings?’
(Six Norfolk Poems – Wintering Grounds)
How many thousands of years have men stood and watched great birds migrate overhead.
So when inclement winters vex the plain
With piercing frost or thick-descending rain,
To warmer seas the cranes embodied fly,
With noise, and order, through the midway sky.
(Homer, Iliad, book III, trans. Alexander Pope)
I have also been gently rocked by the almost palindrome balance of one poem’s title: Fledgling Maybe, Maybe Winged.  Sometimes one can feel fledgling flight-poised while other times being full-winged air-borne.  It reminds me also of a family of condors, the young one standing on a pinnacle unsure whether to launch into the beckoning void. One of his parents nudged him off the edge and, hurled into emptiness, his rip-cord instincts effortlessly unfurled wings into perfect planing.
A lovely book which should be slipped into a briefcase on a business trip – it will keep you grounded in the things that matter, or will help you recalibrate after a boring, pointless or otherwise frustrating meeting. Â Or just take it in your rucksack on your next hike or bike ride; fine reading atop a munro or under a cedar’s spreading branches.


Attentive
‘Attentive as a heron.’
If you’ve been in the sights of a heron’s alert and beady gaze, as he picks his way delicately through mud or field, you will feel how apt this is. Â Â This lovely phrase deserves to step quietly and elegantly into common usage.
Source: Kevin Crossley-Holland, ‘The Remit of Love’, The Breaking Hour (London: Enitharmon Press, 2015), p. 17

Colours
‘Sails blue as promises, pink as flamingos / and green and bitter as kelp.’
Three in one, a sentence dense with colourful metaphor. Â I have no idea of the shade of blue that describes promises, nor did I ever think of promises in terms of colour, let alone blue. Â Pink as flamingos, I had come across, but I also like the ‘green and bitter as kelp’.
Source: Kevin Crossley-Holland, ‘Harald in Byzantium’, The Breaking Hour (London: Enitharmon Press, 2015), p. 33

Rain
‘Rain as fine as stitching, petit point, silk samplers.’
You can feel this rain steadily, gently, saturating the ground, a rain that makes everything bloom.
Source: Kevin Crossley-Holland, ‘September’, The Breaking Hour (London: Enitharmon Press, 2015), p. 55


Dark-eyed dome
A beautiful depiction of the great dome of Hagia Sophia.
Source: Kevin Crossley-Holland, ‘In Hagia Sophia’.

Frosty-grey arrowheads
I see these lying on frost-covered ground, landing where the hunter missed his mark.
Source: Kevin Crossley-Holland, ‘Wintering Grounds’

Rock-jawed dogmatists
May you be ever free from encounters with such…
Source: Kevin Crossley-Holland, ‘Fledgling Maybe, Maybe Winged’


Throstle
An old fashioned term for a song-thrush; a machine for continuously spinning cotton or wool.

Scramasax
A large knife with a single-edged blade, found among Anglo-Saxon grave goods, used for hunting and fighting.

Jouncing
Jolting or bouncing, an apparently neat melding of both words.
To buy the book
Bookdepository.com – free shipping to many countries.
To buy the book
Amazon.com
To buy the Kindle version
Amazon.com
© www.writingredux.com – Beatrice Otto 2015 – design, content, images, unless otherwise stated  I  Powered by WordPress I Designed with Elegant Themes Divi 2.0 I Colours by COLOURlovers
Image & colour credits: header image of ink-in-water swirls by Co-op Goods Co.  I  menu & headings text colour: ‘ink which just sings’ by Avilluk  I  text hover colour: ‘ink it blue’ by Novrain62   I  background grey: ‘”quote” by ms.