Wolf by Elizabeth Morton is an atmospheric and breathtaking collection that explores all the strange and mysterious parts of life. It's all about the sharp edges, the rough shadows, the things that sit in the back of your mind and fester. It's the uncomfortable, the estranged, all tightly packed into a world where the moon never seems to set and the sun never seems to rise.
It begins with Wolf. He is wild and he is also lonely. Morton's language is sharply attuned with the wild world of Wolf. She describes how "as a pup Wolf had mewed / tender words… taller now, Wolf barks consonants." He walks through forests, visits suburbia, travelling with a feeling of loneliness that presses on him the whole way. In Wolf has a dream, this feeling is brought to the fore as Wolf howls "Mo-ther / Mo-ther… but she does not hear". The way Morton contrasts the eerie wanderings of Wolf as well as Wolf's own heartache leaves an unsettling feeling of melancholy.
Then Morton expands out from Wolf into her own world, although it's still not a world removed from the strangeness of the wild forest. Morton's metaphors are raw and her words are tough. One of my favourite poems of the collection, 17, is a beautiful yet eerie piece. Morton begins, "it was March. / we had city grit in our gums, / and heads violent with stars". Descriptions such as these made me pause, consider her words, and imagine in new ways. Morton continues with more of her peculiar and unique imagery: "and at seventeen / we were the final flashing synapse in a wrecked brain. / the last dry thrust of a fish".
In this world, although things are not as wild as Wolf's forest, the presence of Wolf still lives on. In The Dream, Morton and her dog walk through a landscape filled with "steel-wool bushes, the bones of manuka". Morton manages to turn even the everyday into something strange and almost menacing. In Sirius, Morton finds the presence of the canine and the wild again in the deep sky: "I found the Dog Star / winking white and black".
Another poem I really loved in Wolf is Poem in which i am a zombie. It's written in the same vein as others in this collection—menacing and melancholic— and the imagery is still absolutely beautiful. It feels like Morton has dropped me in an alluring world, but she has also pressed pause. With the remote in her hand, Morton is free to show us around while trapping us in a strange state of being in between. Morton describes "powerlines heavy with starlings", how she walks "in dactylic hexameter". Then the loneliness creeps in: "i remember my name. / it leaves a bad taste." This loneliness reaches its height in the final poignant lines of the poem: "now and then / i turn on all the lights / and pretend somebody's home".
Wolf is an absolutely breathtaking collection of poetry that Morton has crafted together with perfection. There is a little bit of Wolf in her and in all of us: the jagged parts of the heart, the strangeness of the night, and ultimately, the sadness. And Morton touches on this all in a heartbreaking but alluring way that kept me enraptured all the way through.
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