The Brontë violinists

We have came across this article published on the July issue of The Jacket where Nicholas Birns reviews A question of gravity: A selection of poems by Elizabeth Smithers (Arc Publications). In the book a quite funny, and absolutely tuned with this blog's topic, poem can be found.

Smither sometimes starts out with a straightforwardly humorous premise, then leads the poem somewhere else. In ‘Error on a Quiz Programme’ she records the game-show challenge ‘Give me the name of three lady violinists/who lived at Haworth Parsonage.’ The confusion of the Bronte sisters with violinists sets Smither off on a series of musings about the counterfactual scenario of the three violinists:

Charlotte on the violin, Anne the viola
And Emily on the violoncello
Each evening in the dark drawing room
They drew up their instruments and played
With the wind above the graves

Charlotte was most in demand as a soloist.
Anne was too shy and with a limited repertoire.
The violoncello takes up too much room in a carriage
If anyone was asked out it was usually Charlotte.
Emily carried the violoncello on her back.
As she tramped across the moors. Sometimes
she laid it across a stream and jumped over it.

The poem makes sharp observations about the actual three sisters in the course of this flight of fancy, ending up attaining greater insight on an oft-assayed subject than a more straightforwardly addressed poem or even essay would have done. What is a direct object for other poets is an indirect object for Smither. She takes one more step to get to her goal, which in this case is a wry sense of the hard-won nature of artistic achievement.

Categories: Poetry,Books