Penguin Modern Poets 19 Ashbery Harwood Raworth
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Sad thing, to think that in the past couple of years all three of the poets who appeared in this influential volume have died, most recently John Ashbery.
The volume catches their output to date in the year 1971. By that time Ashbery and Lee Harwood had already delivered in spades; some of their best poems are here. My perception is that Tom Raworth, the most formally radical of the three, was still feeling for the right kind of space, and the Raworth poems here are opening gambits.
Comparatively speaking. But opening the book at random, with 5 minutes to spare while waiting for a Linux engineer, lets enjoy this opening of a Raworth poem:
There Are Lime-Trees in Leaf on the Promenade
(for Ed & Helene)
the blossom blows
across the step
no moon. night, the curtain moves
we had come back from seeing one friend in the week
they celebrated the twentieth anniversary of victory, fireworks
parades. and all across the town the signs the french
people are not your allies mr johnson who were
then, the old photographs. garlanded the tanks with
flowers now
choke-cherry
a poison we came
separately home
the children were there
covered with pink blossoms like burned men taking
the things they laughed
at the strange coins, tickets. ran
around the house pointing up at the plane then
the only noise
there can be no dedication all things in their way
are the actual scars tension. the feeling
of isolation. love
for me in one way is waiting for it to end
- - - - - -
*
Re line 3, I couldn't help being struck by reading, the next day, in Laurie Duggan's No Particular Place to Go,
My poetry -- a life watching curtains flutter.
("Lives of the Poets")
Labels: Laurie Duggan, Tom Raworth
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