Wendy cope anecdotal evidence (London, Faber and Faber, 2018)

Centuries of English verse

Suggest the selfsame thing: A negative response is rare When birds are heard to sing.

Whatʼs the use of poetry?

You ask. Well, here’s a start: It’s anecdotal evidence About the human heart.

The collection is composed of several thematic, though not entitled by the author, groups of poems – those devoted to half-forgotten stories of the poet’s life, to life and death in general, to her home and place, to time that comes and goes, to Shakespeare (commissioned for his

anniversary in 2016), to some other themes. Many of them are witty and funny, like Shakespeare at School , when the future Bard is shown in a classroom thinking up an idiotic pun and whispering his gem to other boys . The result is obvious –

The fun was over when the master spoke:

Will Shakespeare, come up here and share the joke.

Along with the poems that celebrate the joy of life, others are (self)-reflective, wise and full of compassion. Not surprisingly, The Times characterized the collection as funny, melancholy and devastatingly observant. In some poems concrete – often trifle things have become visible signs of deep, almost accidental flashes of memories – like Christmas cards, that appear in several poems, old bags or even a cardigan on a chair. So, the poems are full of things, but also of real people whom the poet celebrates and to whom she is eager to express her gratitude. On the whole, the collection is clever, moving, deep, touching and funny. Some of the poems disclose open emotions, deeply private and universal at the same time, like A Vow or To My Husband . Here is a poem about her home town of Ely in the East Anglian fens (known to readers of Waterland) .

Ely

(For Mac Dowdy, historian)

We thought our little city got its name From eels. They have been caught and traded here For centuries. The Isle of Eels became

The Isle of Ely. We liked that idea.

But there’s a problem, since the word for eel, Back when the early settlement was founded, Was Anguilla, or schlippen-fisch, or aal, And no-one spoke of eels till 1300.

A newer theory, out of academe:

In ancient times this place was venerated As holy, as a paradise. Its name, As years went by, became abbreviated.

We like it even better: our new home

Is in a city called Elysium.

Wendy Cope is not so widely known in Russia – only some of her poems were translated into Russian by Natalia Krofts. When I read her Anecdotal Evidence collection and decided to review it, I definitely had two reasons in mind: to express my sincere admiration to Cope’s poetry that I have enjoyed for many years now and to attract the Russian readers’ attention to it.