News just in from Nicholas Johnson that English poet and actor Denis
Goacher died last Wednesday (22nd April). A good friend of Pound and
Bunting amongst others, his own work was often slow to find supporters,
though it found loyal publishers in books and magazines from Grosseteste
Review (Logbook, 1972) and Origin (To Romany, 1976). He was a fine
re-worker of non-English poetry (noteably French), and some of his work in
this field was collected as Transversions (Grosseteste 1972). His acting
training and extensive BBC experience made him a strong reader too -
rather overblown for today's self-conscious head-down-in-the-book readers
and audiences, but a model of articulation and cadence.
Bunting wrote of him: "Though Mr. Goacher's poetry is uneven, much of it
requires an attention the public has not yet given it, perhaps because it
is often remote from current fashions. He has a voice of his own, and it
should be heard."
Here's one from Logbook:
FOUR DEAD FRIENDS
run with the wind
You withered leaf mouths lift
And no call catch
Nor wind wait
My friends, I cry,
Died, they've near all died,
Four gone this five months'
Leaf loss time
always men trying to start -
Michael, Harold, Seth and Guy -
That I survive you not
How believe
'Life's death, death also life'
What is there left?
too many stars in the sky.
Though winter's planetary tomb
May look wall-less
A million icy eyes
Leave so little room
I hardly breathe
beloved friends watch there
While love-maimed man thinks no,
If near these alien pines
I cannot make your tomb expand
And each stand with huge Orion
To keep some paradise -
I've failed, everyone has failed.
or that the lesson?
All four sought wisdom
Knew they'd never reach those hills
Or half of middle age?
so, day's here : and look snowdrops have come!
And many robins sing.
While that buzzard climbs
Beyond one spared victim's sight,
Dear comrades I'll not further stain
An immortality
Yet upward still must ask your names
Whom, then, shall I laugh with again?
___________________________________________________________
Richard Caddel
Durham University Library, Stockton Rd., Durham DH1 3LY, UK
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Phone: +44 (0)191 374 3044 Fax: +44 (0)191 374 7481
WWW: http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dul0ric
"Words! Pens are too light. Take a chisel to write."
- Basil Bunting
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