I can't let the Veronica Forrest-Thomson line drop at the point where
she's "prosey" and "very ordinary" with no explanation of those
sweeping judgements. I don't really think I'm the person to do it, but
I'd like at least to move her on from that undeserved slough.

The first thing about VFT is the sheer pace at which she developed
over her short career, a fact which hits you when you follow her work
as presented in her _Collected Poems_: a mind always pushing at
things, gradually shedding "literariness" and stepping out into the
explorations of work in _On The Periphery_, the most substantial
collection put together in her lifetime, and then moving on from that.
That's rare enough, that continual development, to beat the "very
ordinary" rap. Work in OTP actually arges with itself, gradually
reclaiming for itself the right to utilise (and develop as her own)
precisely the forms of poetry (rhyme, stress, rhythm) which others
were bucketting out of the window. In _The Lady Of Shalott: Ode_ she
winds up:

Why should we think of knowledge as light;
There is enough to see her.
And, having seen, the message is plain
To those who wish to know
(They are not many):
Run quickly back to darkness again; 
We have seen the child in the snow.

There's enough subtle variation, enough "flexible, unrepetitive line"
here to beat the "prosey" rap - I'd say. And the later work carries
this on: here's the first diverse verse of "Lemon and Rosemary":

Nobody. I, myself.
Shooting live subjects in pictures sung with imagination and wrung
with truth
Dean knew it was blackmail.

I just admire that long middle line, however it appears in mailbase...

Introducing her late poem "Richard II" she touched on issues which are
still relevant to us, which still crop up on this list as problems
facing most of us:

"[The poem] includes the normal expectations of the reader/listener
but seeks to upset these in the interests of stressing the importance
of non-meaningful levels of language in poetry. This is a more
difficult undertaking from writing an ordinary poem as the balance of
meaning and non-meaning must be very precariously set up. I think it
must be attempted, however, if poetry is once again to take its place
as an experimental exploration of the human mind working in language."

- and here's the conclusion of that poem:

In the joinery timbers there is new infestation
And a damp-proof course is urgently needed.
Say a few prayers to the copper wire.
Technicians are placing flowers in the guttering
They are welding the roof to a patch of sky
Whatever you do, do not climb on the roof.
Before forever after again and always.

limpid eyelid


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