Hooray, the _Collected Poems_ I ordered a while back has arrived and
is good to come home to.
"That one sounds like Stevie Smith," Sarah says of a poem titled "Oh
No" that I have just read aloud in an English accent. "Is it about
death?"
Douglas C. was lamenting the other day the dearth of contemporary
poets to rival Yeats. There are of course other contests in which one
might prefer to participate. But what I've read of Creeley so far - a
handful of poems, out of a thick volume - makes a good showing on
Yeats' home territory: love, death, women, men, age, yearning, that
sort of thing. Not just thematically: I mean the rhythm is there, the
infusing of intelligence into the verse.
I am more at home with the earlier poems than the later ones (the
collection runs up to 1975), having not yet made the journey through
the book that I think would bring the later ones into the right focus.
There a Poundian flashes in the early poems that assist in
orientation. I don't yet know what to make of the very sparse later
poems, how to make them happen for me - assuming that's what they're
there for. (If that's a wrong assumption, I need a replacement. I
don't do unassuming.)
I know shockingly little about American verse, including about how it
sounds, so am not confident of my ability to hear Creeley aright. Also
the whole context - Williams, Zukofsky, Olson and so on - is not there
for me. They don't have anything by Zukofsky in Northampton Central
Library. I am going to have to buy some more books. The Berryman I
ordered at the same time has still not arrived. God, what if all the
best stuff is out of print?
Dominic
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