Migration of Light

Sparling Mills was a freelance reviewer living in Herring Cove, N.S.

The word “light” is used 43 times in Brian Henderson’s Migration of Light. In addition, such words as “glare,” “blinding whiteness,” “shining,” are to be found throughout, as are their opposites “darkness,” “black,” and “shadows.” The light/dark imagery is not only hackneyed, but boring.

Another problem is the structure of the book. It is confusing because not only are there four Parts (“Migrations”) but also five “Series” to the “3rd Migration”!

However, I do not want to give the impression there is nothing praiseworthy about this book. “The Secret Garden” (p. 16) is excellent. The poet is remembering a certain day. First he remembers the setting in detail: the river’s “weedy current” and “an abandoned punt /bumping the dock” (lines 3-5); “the house /curled as secret as a shell /under the darkening blue” (lines 14-16); and a girl “With the seam of a hair-lip /and small hands like hummingbirds” (lines 22-24). These three pictures suggest, above all, human contact. Then his mother leaves. The little boy feels deserted, “the reedy voices of my blood /whispering, whispering” (lines 33-34). The poem has come full-circle from the river of stanza one and the “half-sunk. punt” to the boy sinking with despair. Even the phrase “reedy voices” rhymes with “weedy current.”

Part Two, or “2nd Migration,” is a long poem (pp.37-52) called “Ten Holidays in a Dark Room.” A man and woman are looking at their slides. The poem begins, “The mountains and the seas float through /our journeys /as if we were in one place.” There follow particulars of ten different holidays they took together. Henderson succeeds in keeping the tone colloquial but never flat. The key to his purpose is given at the end of holiday II: “So this is a love poem /trying to drag light, shining /through these heavy scratches /a needle’s eye.”

A further insight into Henderson’s rationale, this time referring to a poet’s life rather than to a single poem, is to be found on page 70:

To write is a suicide. Not

to write, once having started

is also a suicide.

Migration of Light was well worth writing and publishing. The poems are substantial enough to encourage multiple readings. For example, a study of Henderson’s use of the colour “blue” might be rewarding. It reflects in the mind long after the “light” of the title.