[Tim Murphy]

Yesterday Phil Hoy, proprietor of Waywiser Press announced the creation of an advisory editorial board to help him plough through manuscripts and winnow the wheat from the chaff: - http://www.waywiser-press.com/announcements.html . See also http://www.waywiser-press.com/press.html . So two of our lariats, Greg and Clive, will be pitching in to help St. Philip of Finsbury Park.

For the next month or so, the Lariatcy will be devoted to free verse. First Clive will be discussing half a dozen poems from our members' non-metrical board. Then he will begin a series of reflections, "Touchstones," on nonmetrical poems from the canon. We shall return to metrical matters when Sam Gwynn judges the Sonnet Bake-off III. in the spring.

Clive no more needs introducing than did Rhina, but introduce him I shall. Phil Hoy asked Mezey and me for jacket comments for Jigsaw, and this is what we said:

"What I value in poetry, and find in Clive Watkins’s poems, is a faithful, accurate, attentive eye that is always focused on the subject at hand, a mind that is never self-regarding, does not strike postures, has no designs on the reader. (This alone would distinguish him from most of his contemporaries.) I am struck again and again by how many of the ordinary 'things of this world' get into his poems, and how extraordinary they are as seen through the glass of his language. He writes wonderful sentences, often complex and sinuous, yet utterly clear. And perhaps most of all I relish the richness and subtleties of the sound, the sound that says everything. He handles the verse line with consummate grace and ease, the sense inseparable from the sound, seemingly made of it. More than once, as I read this book, Frost’s praise of Robinson has come to mind, 'phrase on phrase on phrase…and every one the closest delineation of something that is something', and too, 'that grazing closeness to the spiritual realities', and I have thought, that’s equally true of Clive Watkins. Like very few contemporary poets, he can make a chill run up my spine, a little shock of recognition, a sense that the great mystery has, for a moment, been made articulate. I don’t use the word 'great' loosely – great poems are few and far between. But among the many good poems in Jigsaw, there are several great poems – I am thinking of 'The Wagon' and 'Events As Things, Things As Events' and 'Abseil' and 'Green Chapel' and 'At Westerby’s' and 'Cherryburn' and 'Hilda and Eddie’s Place' – and there may be others. If England has produced a better poet since Larkin, I can’t think who it would be.” – Robert Mezey

"Watkins is a poet's poet, a masterful writer of metrical verse – rhymed and blank – but one whose free verse is as good as his formal, a rare achievement. The work is rhythmically powerful and unerring in its lineation, informed as it is by the author's decades of teaching Shakespeare. At fifty-seven, Clive Watkins is a fully formed poet, and his first book cause for gratitude both to him and to the publishing house that brings him to us." – Timothy Murphy

I met Clive on the Sphere, and when I read in the Lake District for the Wordsworth Trust, he was kind enough to come hear me. Thus I met him in person. It having never been my privilege to teach, I live in awe of great teachers like Watkins and Mezey. My reservations about free verse are notorious, but there are exceptions. Clive's free verse takes me apart. Here are two examples:

Jigsaw
for Zoë

If it's a spare forty-watt light-bulb you want
or the Phillips screw-driver no-one has seen for weeks,
she will always know where they are,
fallen behind the refrigerator
or trapped between the cool earthenware pots in the back porch.
It's a party-trick, a kind of miraculous clairvoyance.
The one-inch Ordnance sheet of The Lakes?
The ragged thesaurus you've not used
since you gave up on the Sunday Crossword?
A thimble? A needle? The exact shade of indigo silk
for the embroidery you took such pains over?
Just ask. Her hazel eyes will grow still,
and the missing whereabouts fall from her tongue.
Tilt back the cupboard, and there it is -
the lost left-hand glove, the lost photo.
Just as she predicted, the hapless torch,
its fat batteries spent and leaking,
rests in the airing cupboard between the spare blankets
switched on and forgotten by whoever it was
last climbed up to the loft's gritty dark;
and the unfinished letter to your cousin hides
in the piano stool with the yellowing music.

Bent forward, her face veiled in hair,
she fingers a single piece of the Christmas jigsaw,
willing it to its proper home
in that maddening lacework of gaps,
as if in her child's head she held
the one true map of how things were
before our radical untidiness set in,
waiting patiently for the right season, for the right word,
to put back everything once again, just as it was.


Mr and Mrs Fell Tackle the Late Summer Grasses

It is a watery early-evening light,
a greenness on the solitary larch,
the stiff laurels, the birch loftily at ease,
in which the woman and her blind companion
fret over the shuddering mower. His glaucous eyes
are expressionless as she pokes with a stick
to clear from the blocked outfall the damp grass;
then binds the rope once more around her waist,
cursing above the clatter of the blade
his stumbling, his unruly slowness,
she in front, dragging out into the meadow
the dull machine, he unseeing behind,
his frail weight on the bar urging her onward.

To and fro between hedge and wall they draw
their green furrow, the mowings cast behind
already in the last light drying paler
as they cut back into the wanton grass
swathe after warm swathe undeviating,
while dusk steals from them weight and substance,
eats into their faces, into the thick lines of her waist,
his bowed shoulders, toiling together to and fro
in the faecal scent of their mowing, till nothing remains
but their ancient voices, querulous and obscure,
peeling sharper and thinner still beneath
the moon's edge, the faint persistent stars.

I began as a free verse poet, but my tutor, Robert Penn Warren, told me I couldn't write free verse until I had learned to write formal verse. Which I set out to do. Many times in the intervening decades I have tried to write free verse, and I just can't do it. I think Clive is living proof of Warren's wisdom. His free verse is informed by his experience in formal verse, and it is characterized by an unerring sense of line. When the idea came up of turning to free verse at the Lariat Board, my first choice was not Dana Gioia, nor Pete Fairchild, but Clive Watkins, and I thank him for joining us.

[Carol Taylor]

I met Clive at West Chester and it was my great privilege to hear him read selections from his new book, Jigsaw. Green Chapel made me cry in public. Jigsaw is probably more free verse than metrical, and every poem worth rereading and reflecting on. As well as a gifted poet, Clive is the ultimate teacher. He is a close reader whose critiques delve into the marrow of a poem. He is attuned to the sound and structure of line and the nuances of language. Perhaps it is this blending of ear and intellect which makes his own work so polished and effective.

I look forward to Clive's Lariatship and the chance to look at some examples of free verse through his eyes.

Carol

[Clive Watkins]

Dear Tim, Dear Carol

Thank you for your kind words.

I just would like to clarify the statement on the Forums Page about my stint as Lariat. My plan was not quite to post “a series of critical essays on well-known non-metrical poems from the canon.” This makes what I have in mind sound more ambitious than I intend; as it stands, it would certainly be something beyond my capacity. My idea is as follows.

I will post a series of occasional pieces (not exceeding six) in which I quoted a short passage from a non-metrical poem which interested me – a published poem, that is, not one being work-shopped at Eratosphere – and offered a few brief comments, amounting to perhaps not more than three hundred words, about the passage and the techniques apparent there. These might be well-known passages; they might not. I should post such articles as and when I had time and when the spirit moved me, so to speak. They would not therefore appear on a regular basis.

A partial model for this is what Pound did (with metrical verse, of course) in his ABC of Reading (London, 1934), where he put together a set of illustrative passages which he termed his "Exhibits".

Members would be encouraged to add their own comments to the original posting. For myself, however, I would decline to add supplementary comments to any of these threads. In my view it would be much more important for members to consider and discuss among themselves the technical implications of the passages quoted.

Kind regards

Clive Watkins

[Tim Murphy]

It's a little mystifying to me that we have 34 comments and 450 visits on Oliver's poem, and so little traffic on these two poems by Clive, which I posted precisely because Mezey thinks they are great poems, models for free versifiers to emulate.

[Jim Hayes]

It shouldn't be mystifying at all Tim, how do you critique a master?
Most readers, I suspect, were like me who read and silently departed in awe.

Jim

[oliver murray]

Sorry, Tim,

I think there is a misunderstanding here. Perhaps we did not realize these poems were in need of comment. These are among my favourites from Clive's book - and I will confess that one or two which Prof Mezey praises highly are totally incomprehensible to me, but not these two, which is not to say there may not be things in them I am too obtuse to see.

Jigsaw.

I certainly would not quarrel with Clive's line breaks, or any of his word choices. I like "hazel" for the girl's eyes, with its connotation of the old material for diviners' rods (now it is umbrella spokes) and the interesting "list" of missing bits and pieces. Pace, mood, everything is just right. I think the ending is a bit of a stretch if one asked what would be the right word, or the right season, but I think Clive gets away with it, just.

Mr and Mrs Fell Tackle the Late Summer Grasses.

Again, no problem with the line breaks. An excellent portrait of this couple, nice atmospheric piece. One of them is blind, their way of cutting grass is somewhat unusual, they are querulous. This is all we know about them. Some might say they would like to know more, but I think this is enough. I am not sure I would use "two and fro" even once, much less twice, as it is such an obvious characteristic of mowing a lawn, but this is a minor thing. I love the ending

"in the faecal scent of their mowing, till nothing remains
but their ancient voices, querulous and obscure,
peeling sharper and thinner still beneath
the moon's edge, the faint persistent stars."

Lovely,

Oliver.

[Janet Kenny]

Clive and Tim,
Sorry, I didn't realise that any comment was expected.
(Tim, are you sure we should have commented? There's been no sort of reaction from anyone. I feel out of place.)

For Zoë
Am I reading too much into this poem when I imagine that it’s a loving portrait of a “special” or “damaged” child or woman? That’s the impression the poem leaves with me.

If that is so, her detailed map of object, association and location is touchingly described with just the right amount of deliberation.

The line breaks seem to happen effortlessly and the poem is simple and graceful.
This seems to be the resolution of the previous mysteries in the poem:
Bent forward, her face veiled in hair,
she fingers a single piece of the Christmas jigsaw,
willing it to its proper home
in that maddening lacework of gaps,
as if in her child's head she held
the one true map of how things were
before our radical untidiness set in,
waiting patiently for the right season, for the right word,
to put back everything once again, just as it was.

The last line seems to be laden with another set of sad facts that explain the rest of the poem.


Mr and Mrs Fell Tackle the Late Summer Grasses

Despite the cleverly built theatre in the second poem I feel that the characters have been rather dehumanised in order to become a metaphor for the poet. Something in me rebels to read of the mechanical meaninglessness of their walk towards their deaths.
The images are beautiful and heavy.
And then I think that the poet is writing about the emotions he feels when he sees them and that puts it all back into its acceptable place again. The landscape is lovely and is a good contrast for the toiling figures.
There is a wonderful doggedness and fatalism. Like a blowfly on a windowpane. Waiting for Godot. A cross between Millet and Beckett.

This poem employs a fair number of adjectives and although it touches the edge it never crosses. I did hesitate at “wanton grass”. “Unruly slowness”. That’s good but I wonder is there one word for that?

It’s a strong poem. I have a personal rule about stars. I think the poet has to work very hard to earn the word “stars”. I think you have earned these ones.
Best wishes,
Janet

PS
I really think I shouldn't have written this but in case Clive reads this I want to say that ever since I did write it I have been haunted by the second poem. It is very powerful stuff. Mr and Mrs Fell are still mowing inside my head.


[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited February 05, 2004).]

[Robert J. Clawson]

"If England has produced a better poet since Larkin, I can’t think who it would be.” – Robert Mezey

I can: Ted Hughes.

Bob

[Clive Watkins]

Dear Bob

I would extend your list considerably, given that Larkin was born in 1922 and produced his first book in 1945, the year of my birth. How about these? – Geoffrey Hill, Tony Harrison, Roy Fisher and Peter Scupham? This is to ignore a number of much younger poets, as well as several very fine Welsh and Scottish poets (for instance, Oliver Reynolds and Douglas Dunn) and those from Northern Ireland, among whom Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Derek Mahon would have to come into the reckoning.

By the way, I think Hughes’s reputation has been in decline for some years, at least in the UK. Re-evaluations of this kind are part of the process of literary history, of course. For what it is worth, I have thought for a long time that he has been generally overrated.

I am grateful to Bob Mezey for his generous remarks - he is an experienced and attentive reader of verse - though I am under no illusions about them.

Thank you for your own comment.

Clive

[peter richards]

Still got a soft spot for that Thom Gunn

p