Haunted Islands Part II by J. Redwood Anderson (1924)

I wanted a different experience of this volume, because its predecessor had felt a little dull-edged. I decided to read it aloud, and something clicked. Some of my criticisms of Part I still stand, but approached this way this volume got me going on many occasions. The quiet drama of Anderson's post-war work can be brought out by taking a good amount of time over each line, and savouring them to the full. Still sometimes when a line is a single word it's too much, or when a rhyme is just that amount too obvious it still jars, but a good number of these pieces impressed me quietly. A favourite is The Goat, a twin-engined meditation on those that head beyond the standard life to live in rarefied air, with its increased vision, which utilises both a goat metaphor (he escapes his twisted rope and heads for precipitous climes) and more straightforward human description. Another fine example is The Shed, a softer and richer piece of impressionism about a farm shed and its smells, quiet, dim light and animal residents. I am interested to find out if Anderson, having abandoned to some extent the more strong-voiced narrative poetry of his early period which was so effective, is here following a new master or mistress. Yeats, perhaps? Another reading-path beckons....