Moontan

In the title poem, the protagonist basks by moonlight, becoming paler and paler until suffused with a strange bliss, an eerie spiritual purity, for ’night’s the time when inspiration’s filtered through the dark / and gleams.’ The poem sets the tone for Don Rodgers’ first collection, in which landscapes, everyday gestures, mundane objects and encounters are transformed through striking, often sensuous images, whose generative power owes much to the controlled musicality of the language used. Here, keys, in the poem of that name, can be a symbol of the tyranny of the everyday object, whereas in ‘Chateau Lamouche’ the housefly is portrayed as a familiar alien, both pitiful and terrifying. Other poems such as ‘Stigmata’ set out to challenge and explore religious ideas, expressing a yearning for the sacred which is indissolubly linked to the profane.