SOURCE: Ford, Mark. “Sssnnnwhuffffll.” London Review of Books 11, no. 2 (19 January 1989): 14-5.

In the following essay, Ford discusses the themes of Szirtes's book Metro.

George Szirtes is a less frolicsome poet than Morgan, and his new volume, Metro, has him dealing with particularly grim subject-matter. The book's long title poem is set in the Hungary of 1944-45. The country has been overrun by fascist forces, and Hungarian Jews, including the poet's own mother, are being rounded up and sent to concentration camps. The poem's narrative cuts between his own childhood memories of Hungary and the fates of various branches of the Szirtes family, but mainly concerns his mother's love for a disdainful older brother, lost during the war, her courtship, and the circumstances surrounding her arrest. In contrast with Carson's Belfast, wartime Budapest is presented by Szirtes in lurid, mythical terms. The poem's city is more a generalised European...