Timothy Steele's new book of poems Toward the Winter Solstice is well worth a look. This is a book of quiet observation and recollection--no car chases or interplanetary warfare here. But the images and message of the best of these poems, heightened by Steele's skillful use of rhyme and meter, linger long after the book is put down. For my money this is one of the best books of metrical poetry in quite some time.
Many of Steele's most memorable poems in prior books deal with the fleetingness of pleasure ("Eros" and "An Aubade") and of life and relationships ("The Skimming Stone" and "Walking Her Home"). In the new book, though, Steele focuses on the persistence of what is closely seen or deeply felt.
"Joanna, Wading" vividly describes a lake as seen by an elderly woman who swam there as a girl. The sunlight casts a "net of rippling, molten bands" on the water and the sandy lake floor; a school of minnows floats before her for a moment in "suspended flash-and-glide"; a dragonfly "blue-brilliantly" skims the surface. The poet notes off-handedly, "Despite age, all this still occurs," and it seems a passing thought; but this theme of good things persisting pervades the book.
"Ethel Taylor" similarly celebrates a quiet life well lived, using an easy-going blank verse and reflective tone reminiscent of Frost's "The Black Cottage."
Another echo of early Frost (Frost's "A Tuft of Flowers") is turned into something strikingly different and original in "The Sweet Peas." (I initially hated the title of this, which conjured up an unfortunate mix--flowery Victorian verse, saccharine pop songs, and a character from "Popeye." But the startling strength of the material, and its specific reference to the twisting, climbing vine of the title, allayed my misgivings on this.) The poem concerns a confused, dying neighbor with brain cancer who complimented a flower garden she thought she saw earlier that day, though actually it faded long ago. With inticate, twining sentences like the flowered vine he describes, Steele pays tribute to his neighbor's grace and gratitude that also persist in memory long after they're gone. It's a stunning poem.
Though the poems on what really lasts (the title poem "Toward the Winter Solstice" is another) form the core of the book for me, there is much else to admire here on other themes, too. "April 27, 1937" draws a brave and chilling parallel between Franco's slaughter of civilians at Guernica (a Nazi-supported try-out of Gernany's World War II tactics) with the civilian devastation caused by the Allies' later bombings at Dresden and Hiroshima, carpet-bombing in Vietnam and, by implication, the shock-and-awe bombings designed for civilian terror in our own day. "Siglo de Oro" uses Cervantes' Don Quixote and Velasquez' paintings to reflect on the interplay between art and life. "A Muse" cleverly depicts artistic inspiration as a stand-offish, would-be lover who gives the poet just enough encouragement to keep him frustratingly in pursuit of "art's rich and magical suggestiveness," despite success that is only sporadic.
Steele is one of the most skillful practitioners of rhyme and meter in his generation, and so this is a book most Eratospherians should enjoy. I gather it will become available at Amazon and other booksellers in the next couple weeks. (I'm apparently on a mailing list for the publisher; I got a notice in the mail and was able to order a copy by phone last week, and then was surprised to see that Amazon shows the official releae date as May 1.) The sound system is well-tuned in this one. Listen in!
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