leaves wrestle

 

Erman's Birch (Betula ermanii) maybe. Midsomer Norton, 23 April 2022.

the right to work                   
the rest not
just supposin’
baas
gibbets ahead
sweet rocket
rue
rubbed lemon balm
a snake
thoughtless as a bird
thud rolled hibiscus bloom
onto a plastic cover
water violets duck
earth
into water
into fire
into air
no longer
able to focus
the match flame
adoring its blue
‘shadow
my sweet nurse
keep me from burning’
george peele
had bethsabe say
educated in empire
internal colonialism
occupation
by a foreign power
whose
lives
does the government affect?
colossal heartburn
don’t confuse
not feeling able to go
with wanting to stay

machines
now live in space
we place them so
our shell is thicker
“what is that?”
“that is a dancing girl”
“is it killed
with, or by, now?”

[from Tom Raworth's "West Wind", written 1982-1983.]

Prunus 'Ukon'. Frome, 1 April 2022.

Yes, I know, "West Wind" is a somewhat obvious Tom Raworth poem to focus on. But suitable for Raworth novices, which is exactly what I am. 

For one thing, "West Wind" is unusually accessible. It appeared as the final poem of Tottering State: New and Selected Poems, 1963-1983 (1984). It's in the Collected Poems (2003) of course. It's also the most substantial piece in Miles Champion's selection As When (2015), which otherwise consists mostly of short poems. (That's where I read it.) It's also available online: 

https://my-blackout.com/2020/04/14/tom-raworth-west-wind/  

"West Wind" is accessible in another way, too. There are parts of the poem that comment angrily on political events of the time. (Margaret Thatcher appears as "a handbag".) Another section relates to visiting his mother in hospital before her death in 1983, and her memory loss. These are just the kind of topics we expect modern poems to be about. But not poems by Tom Raworth. 

The glimpses of emotion and autobiography light up pathways through the dense text; it's astonishing to discover how much life subsists within these telegraphic lines of one or two words, predominantly nouns. 

Perhaps as a result, "West Wind" has received more commentary than most other Raworth poems (see end of post for examples).

Prunus 'Ukon'. Bath, 8 April 2022.

The extract came from section XI, the last and longest. (They are not actually numbered.)

Here it is once more, with notes:

the right to work

[Slogan used by protesters against high unemployment.

the rest not                                 
just supposin’   

                 

[1980 Status Quo album, with a cruise missile on the sleeve.

baas                                   

                

[Sheep. Also "boss" as used by black Africans to white colonials (King Solomon's Mines; Time of the Butcherbird).

gibbets ahead
sweet rocket

[Another name for Dame's Violet (Hesperis matronalis).

rue                  

[A herb; sorrow, regret, repentance and (a major theme of "West Wind") remembrance.

rubbed lemon balm
a snake
thoughtless as a bird
thud rolled hibiscus bloom  

onto a plastic cover

[Hibiscus flower has a snake-like appearance. Motif on beachwear fabrics etc.

water violets duck   

               

[Water Violet: Hottonia palustris.

earth                  

into water

into fire
into air

[The four elements...

no longer
able to focus
the match flame 

adoring its blue 

[Cf. "a city's blue glow spikes / from shadows fanned" (Section I), "matchsticks" (Section VI).                   

‘shadow                

my sweet nurse

keep me from burning’
george peele
had bethsabe say

[Sc. 1 of David and Bethsabe (c. 1594). Bethsabe's bathing song and subsequent speech connect three elements: fire, air and water. (The air is Zephyr, the West Wind.) But as Raworth notes, the real matter of her enjoyment and David's lust is the unspoken element, earth.

educated in empire
internal colonialism
occupation
by a foreign power

[The Falklands, April 1982. But internally we too are occupied by a foreign power (Westminster). 

whose
lives
does the government affect?
colossal heartburn
don’t confuse
not feeling able to go
with wanting to stay 

machines             

now live in space

[Satellites, since 1957. The vast majority are American. Ronald  Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative in March 1983.

we place them so

our shell is thicker

[Cf. "armour", "carapaces", elsewhere in the poem.

“what is that?”
“that is a dancing girl”
“is it killed               

with, or by, now?”

[Moral agency of machines.

Pear blossom (Pyrus communis). Frome, 12 April 2022.

Other notes:

from Section VI:

the      w     particle      

[Predicted in the 1960s, detected in 1983. Important in radioactive decay. 

shadowed by sunset

slid right

leaving an ocean           

flattened by the moon  

[The moon's gravity stretches the ocean (towards the sublunar point) and thus flattens it. In this scene the poet looks southward over the sea (English Channel? Brighton?). Sunset is on the right and a rising full moon on the left. The poet is looking ahead but thinking behind: into his own head: "nothing in their heads / but a sense of distance / between their ears" and behind him "i feel / behind me / examining my hair / friend / lifeless rock". (The question of what's alive and what isn't alive keeps coming up in the poem, e.g. in connection with technology -- computers, missiles.)

Reproduction of the graphic at the end of Section VI of "West Wind"

This was fun. I was trying to work out how Raworth's graphic was made. As you can see from the colours, most of the pattern can be drawn with just three lines. There are then seven accretions, mostly on the right (from TULIP downwards), and an isolated one at the bottom (STOAT). 

Some of the words are split up: O / SIP  (e.g. Mandelstam) ; MA / JORCA . 

ARGUS : Operation Argus was a 1958 US nuclear test to see if high altitude nuclear detonations produced "phenomena of potentially significant military importance by interfering with communications and weapons performance".

The graphic relates in a very general way to the introspective end of Section VI; the poet's uneasy thinking, fear of the pointlessness of language, and desire to believe in its solidity and solace:

the noise 

of mind

leaves wrestle

stalks green

matchsticks

descriptive words

verbs

directions

spherical geometry

the comfort of nouns

Honesty (Lunaria annua). Frome, 12 April 2022.

from Section VII:

timex

down to france

computer city

[One of the earliest home computers, the Timex/Sinclair 1000 (US version of the Sinclair ZX-81) went on sale in 1981. It cost $99.

richard seebright (?)    

fruit painter

[Richard Sebright (1868-1951) at Royal Worcester.

Common Mouse-ear (Cerastium fontanum). Bratton hill fort, 15 April 2022.

from Section VIII:

cement works

by the medway

[There are several between Snodland and Rochester. The poet is on his way to visit his mother in hospital. By train, most likely, as in Section X.

faint dots

apple green

through stiff orchards

thirties white concrete

glass shattered

in rusted frames

my mother sits 

[From the description this sounds like the original building of the Kent and Canterbury Hospital, opened in 1937 and then noted for its gleaming white walls. 

The hospital campus was much expanded in the 1960s, which might explain "the doctor / is at the other hospital" (Section IX). 

English Elm (Ulmus procera). Frome, 16 April 2022.

from Section IX:

god made me

no

my parents made me

a protection

and an ornament

new money

says in Latin

a motto

my father notes

evelyn

recommended to charles

[John Evelyn's motto for the Royal Society: Nullius in verba. Based on Horace and meaning "Swearing allegiance to no master", i.e. Don't take somebody else's word for it (Aristotle's, say). 

Unfortunately the same principle of sturdy independence from authority doesn't extend to deciding what to research, or who purchases the results. In practice, science is an instrument for the exploitation of others. That, of course, is my opinion, not Tom Raworth's. As one of the earliest survivors of open heart surgery, he might reflect that his adult life was made by science, as well as by his parents.

Sophie Watson on nullius in verba : https://www.plebity.org/conversations/nullius-in-verba-take-no-ones-word

followed

by an alliance party broadcast

[The grieving poet thinks it's "lucky" his mother is missing the party political broadcast by the SDP-Liberal Alliance (in the lead-up to the general election of June 1983). 

Greater Pond-sedge (Carex riparia). Biss Meadows (Trowbridge), 20 April 2022.

from Section X:

what distance

between the double orange lines

in a roman wall? 

[As on the Roman wall at Silchester, where double lines of tile alternate with flint and stone. Maybe there's something like that in the Roman parts of Canterbury's city walls? 

Ribwort Plantain (Plantago lanceolata). Frome, 21 April 2022.

from Section XI:

five days ago

i saw a ring

around the evening sun

radius tip of thumb

to little finger

of my stretched right arm

brown to purple

edged by a rainbow

lacking red and orange

clouds almost clear

streamed from the horizon

bent at the colour

as smoke in a wind tunnel

[That's more than enough information to identify the ring as a 22 degree halo, the most common solar halo. 

A nice sighting to be told about, not exactly commonplace. But surely what stands out, in the context of a Raworth poem, is a lucidity that verges on chattiness; lines that distinctly lack compression or consequence or rapidity.

What's going on here? I think the underlying topic must be the poet's own unusual approach in this particular poem. He's, as it were, commenting ironically on it and wondering just how much of this kind of thing he wants to do. Not much at all, as it proved.

Apetalous form of Bulbous Buttercup (Ranunculus bulbosus). Frome, 21 April 2022.

Some pieces about Tom Raworth that I've enjoyed reading: 

Iain Sinclair, "The poet steamed". An LRB review of the Collected Poems and Removed for Further Study (essays about Raworth edited by Nate Dorward). 

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v26/n16/iain-sinclair/the-poet-steamed

Brian M. Reed, 'Carry on, England: Tom Raworth's "West Wind," Intuition, and Neo-Avant-Garde Poetics", Contemporary Literature Vol. 47, No. 2 (Summer, 2006), pp. 170-206.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4489156

Mandy Bloomfield, '"A fluctuating relationship with nature": Tom Raworth’s ecopoetics,' Critical Quarterly Vol 59 No 2 (2017), pp. 65-82:

https://www.academia.edu/40073084/_A_fluctuating_relationship_with_nature_Tom_Raworth_s_ecopoetics

I've also read "What Was To One Side or Not Real:The Poetry of Tom Raworth 1970–1991", a chapter in Robert Sheppard's The Poetry of Saying: British Poetry and its Discontents 1950-2000 (2005). The full text is available online, but I doubt if the download is legal, so I'm not giving the link.

White form of Honesty (Lunaria annua). Yate, 22 April 2022.