on Peacocke, Joseph, Rumens, Sail

M.R. PEACOCKE, Selves,(Peterloo Poets) £5.95
JENNY JOSEPH, Ghosts and Other Company (Bloodaxe)£6.95
CAROL RUMENS, Best China Sky (Bloodaxe) £6.95
LAWRENCE SAIL, Building into Air (Bloodaxe) £6.95

Ghosts seem to be in fashion. Both M.R. Peacocke in the title poem of Selves and Jenny Joseph in 'The Allotted Time' encounter them beside the road while driving. Joseph, whose book is largely a celebration of ghosts, asks some to dinner: 'Come and have dinner, ghosts, you would be welcome', while Carol Rumens extends an invitation to just one, that of Elizabeth Bishop:
 

You'd quickly feel at home, as guest, as
   ghost,
Pleased by the manner, more pleased to
   discern
A climate amiable, reserved, unfussed
And modern.

All three poets are well aware that they are dealing not merely with the past but with a traditional way of understanding it. In the twentieth century it was Yeats who most memorably offered hospitality to ghosts, and it is his delicately shaded tone (solemn-urbane, perhaps, or formal-colloquial) that Rumens catches so well in her piece. The rituals are ready when needed, in literature and in life. With the onset of winter, both Joseph and Peacocke feel a death poem coming on:
 

Bonfires, Hallowe'en past, children
   running through the streets,
Something stirring in the blood that
   makes us rise
And stand at the window, leaving the
   curtain ajar,
Expectant of something, watching,
...