News at Eleven: The moon is an abiding presence

in her [Ruth Fainlight's] poetry and a "disturbing muse". Sometimes, as in the early poem "New Moon and Full Moon", the moon "should not be trusted:/A black umbrella twitched/Over the staring face of the present"; sometimes it's an intimate female companion ("Old reliable Moon . . . My sister Moon"). The preoccupation reminds us of Sylvia Plath (a friend whom Fainlight elegises beautifully in "Autumn Stirring"); it also brings to mind the lunar interests of her friend and mentor Robert Graves. Woman, Graves intimated, because she is muse and moon-goddess, cannot really be a "true" poet. Happily, Fainlight's poems serve to disprove him, in more ways than one.

from The Guardian: New & Collected Poems by Ruth Fainlight

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