Exploring a family tree

Press, 26 May 1979, Page 17

Exploring a family tree

a Familiar Tree. By Jon Stallworthy. Drawings by David Gentleman. i Oxford University Press, 1978. 80 ? pp. $5.95 (paper). (Reviewed by A. J. Curry) Jon Stallworthy is an established poet in England, with five collections of poetry, and several books to his credit. The books include two studies of W. B. Yeats’ poetry, and an excellent biography of Wilfred Owen. Stallworthy discovered that his greatgrandfather was the author of a volume of New Zealand history, “Early Northern Wairoa” (1916). His discovery led him to a churchyard in Buckinghamshire from which, with the aid of “. . . brown ink in a parish register/a shadow on lichened stone,” he was able to reconstruct the bones of a family tree stretching from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. The long poem, “A Familiar Tree” is a fleshing o'ut of the bare bones of this family tree in accordance with Tolstoy’s dictum in “War and Peace” that “To study the laws of history. . . we must leave aside kings, ministers and generals, and study the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are moved.”

The resulting elements of the poem which are grouped according to the place in which each senior male Stallworthy lived, constitute a rich patchwork, each part of which attempts to describe the forces which moved the Stallworthy family at various times in history. Though the springs from which the poetry is derived are obviously personal (a series of notes explain the personal references), this in no way limits the scope or universality of what the poet says, and the result is a

long poem of extraordinary richness and variety. Its purpose is 1 to function as a mirror into which later generations may peer to find their bearings, or carry as a talisman which will ensure that the children will always return “ ... to this familiar, well-planted ground.” The delightful drawings of David Gentleman complete this fine piece of work.