From Seam #29 by Michael Bayley
How much Winter Lines depends upon the poetry of William Carlos Williams is evident in this attractive first collection by Daniel Healy. Many of the American poet’s literary tics are self-consciously employed: ‘ands’ becoming ampersands; the blending of a speaking voice with a tone essentially poetic; line-breaks ensuring we notice each object and colour as they move the eye inside the fragile frame of each poem. In fact, the biggest nod in the direction of Carlos Williams comes in a piece entitled ‘&’: ‘I am standing/content/& seeing nothing/but the black iron/stairs/slick with rain/above the window’.
Keeping in mind Healy is paying homage to his inspiration, it is perhaps invidious to draw attention to such an apparent influence, especially as there are signs that the work is developing in a direction that can accommodate more of the leitmotif of lines, the poems become more than the sum of their parts, creating a cumulative impact where inner turmoil occasionally breaks their surface calm:
Shaving in
the white basin
red drops
of blood
& the sudden
reflection
of my father’s
face.
The eye runs automatically back over the poem in search of significance. But how much significance? It could be that, like a dream, the poem tempts the reader to infer more meaning than is perhaps present. Is this poem suggesting undisclosed violence between father and son, or simple recognition of the blood-line? Perhaps the attraction of these poems lies in the ease with which the reader is able to project his own experience over them. Meaning emerges through simple identification rather than having to intrusively search for it.
This is why the unobtrusive idea of lines is so important to the collection. After reading the poems a second time, one begins to see them everywhere, from the lines of the lightning sketches to ‘the black furrows’ of ‘Flint’, a poem bringing to mind a woodcut. We move from the almost casual Winter Lines (as if these poems were mere notes on a seasonal landscape) to lines hinting at a deeper meaning: lines of continuance, separation, lines of pattern, imagined lines. ‘Fragment’ and ‘Agoraphobic’ emphasise this intensifying of theme. In ‘Fragment’ a child is tracing on the glass of a train window the outline of the passing trees and hills, as if in some way confirming the world he inhabits. ‘Agoraphobic’ expresses fear of the world without the security of lines/boundaries: ‘it seems that peace of mind/is dependent/on the transparency of glass/rather/than the liquid nature of trees’.
What emerges from these pure and strongly realised poems is the knowledge of the importance of continuity in our lives. We are nothing but the sum of our everyday experiences. ‘Thaw’ intimates that even after snowfall, when the familiar lines of the street have been blurred or obliterated, the way forward is over old ground: ‘Black ice/in white snow/uncovered in the rain/unable to stop/the gaze returning/to that jagged line/of footprints/tracing the way’. Perhaps, also, there’s recognition in this extract of treading technically over old ground and the hint of a need to melt the frozen image, to soften the ‘jagged line’.
I think my only reservation about Winter Lines is that it might be ten or fifteen poems too long. These are poems that rely on less being more and maybe this concept should have been applied to the editing also. Otherwise, it’s an admirable collection, with images so finely focused the poems seem painted rather than written.
As a bookseller Dan Healy is surrounded by words every day. Perhaps it is this surfeit of words which has made him so selective and precise about the words he chooses to use in his own poems. In these brief, elegant poems every syllable has worked hard to win its place on the page. The poems are extremely satisfying to read. Whether they recall the cold Welsh seascapes of his childhood, or a beautiful girl glimpsed in the park, they are characterised by a direct, emotive voice. These short poems last for a long time. I found myself reflecting on them and returning to them days after I finished reading them.
Kate Rhodes.
In this debut collection Dan Healy, a young Welsh poet, displays the power of writing that is pared back to the essentials. The poems appear to be fragments, but they resonate long after the page is turned; cool, sharp language that stirs the depths. “When the need arises to excise the troubles of a day just gone, this is a book to be reached for and, as with lowering one's face to a bowl of chilled water, dipped into. Dan Healy's poems are quiet moments… be they of acutely observed park, roadside caff or river – they ask us to share in his sense of wonder at a moment's this-ness, '...a shiver of light...'” Sam Smith, The Journal