My wife and I were good friends of Ric's for over twenty years, and loved
both him and his wife Ann and their wonderful daughter Lucy, who gave so
much joy to Ric. Hard to find words to share, but I thought, since I had
just reviewed his Magpie Words, that I would post the last part of the
review by way of saying something about both Ric and his work. Here it is,
sadly apt, as the section of the poem quoted touches on the accidental
death of his son, Tom:
making a music out of language
making a moon
red air flame under stars
yesterdays filled with singing
yesterdays text of today
unreal // distinguish
can words make grief
so good // finding
naming one unchanging and changed.
Caddel's grief (the poem is in memory of his son Tom) only deepens the
readers sense of the parted that ends the very first section of the
poem. Certainly, the son, fixed by death, is both unchanging in memory
and yet changed, echoing Yeats, changed utterly. I mention Yeats, both to
show an affiliation for depth, but also to invoke the doubled, even tripled
largeness of the perception that emerges from the passage. In Caddels
work, "Yesterdays text of today" has taken the measure of that singing of
another time, not only that half-rejected Northern sound which so nourishes
his lines but also the instancing of an imagined Britain lying in all its
aura of a lost Golden Age. It is all there, placed under Caddel's
impressive palimpsest.
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