I was ill,
convalescing in fact
when I read this book
On Poetry.
I was a captive audience,
couldn’t move much.
I sat by a window
and enjoyed the light
playing shadows.
Twice in two days
I read this book.
It convinced me I was already
a judge of poets and like its author
only needed seconds to know
whether a poet was present in a poem.
The book encouraged me to
‘Read all the way back.
Read what made it.
Read what’s still here
And work out why . . .
Read up on the old stories
Know a little of what past poets knew
And what their poems still know.’
I thought that was quite enough.
But no, a little later
there was more I had to learn.
I was given as a gift
a collection of poems.
Its prizewinning author
had published respectably.
Imagination would take flight
into airspace off the radar screen.
Childhood scenes were to chill and disturb,
erotica left a bad taste in the mouth,
narrative poems told with a twist, and
common-place objects freshly observed.
Dear Reader, this I can truly say
is a confident, page-turning volume,
full of proper poems,
full of a poet’s presence.
But, for me
there was a significant absence of wonder,
a sad deficiency of joy.
When I brought the book to bed
to read out loud to the one I love,
not one of the poems seemed
right to read to end our day.
These poems called for hard chairs
and the bright lights of a seminar room.
Later, awake in the night,
I thought,
I’m not hard-edged enough to be a real poet.
My poet’s view is too parochial and kind.
I write about penguins, the moon,
even Christmas cake . . . and prose poems
on subjects filched from postcards
picked up in museums and galleries.
And there is, inevitably and always,
this ever-present thing called love,
creeping about when you least expect it.
Know I’m at one with Dr Givens
in Guteson’s East of the Mountains
who laments that with death
the tender memories of life
will be gone –
forever.
So with my poems I try to record
the daily wonder of life and love:
for those I care for
and those who care for me.
Life is so inexpressively full
of images and moments
waiting for words to bring them home.
Oh I know there’s pain,
and fear and distress,
hate and abuse and terror . . .
This is not for me what poetry
is there to express.
I’ve read enough to know it can,
and does. That’s enough.
*Poetry forms in the face of time.
You master form you master time.
The book On Poetry is by Glyn Maxwell published in 2012 by Oberon Masters.
