REVIEWS ISSUE 6
LOST
EARTH: A LIFE OF CEZANNE by
PHILIP CALLOW Philip
Callow has a novelist's sense of character as well as a strong, clear
prose style which makes this a fascinating and intensely pleasurable read.
Cezanne was a complex man and in exploring his complexity- his relations
with his father, his fear of women, his early friendship with and later
estrangement from Zola all played their part-Callow reveals the tormented
human being within the great artist. Time and again in reading this book,
it occurred to me that had Cezanne not been a talented painter, he would
probably have been merely a miserable human specimen, for his torment lay
not simply in his struggle to express what he believed to be nature's
truth, but in the conflicts of a personality haunted by fear; timidity and
the sense of betrayal which so often accompanies them. Yet there was great
courage too. Callow has an astute and sensitive understanding of painting
and his respect for Cezanne's importance to modern art is convincing. He
is good on the influences, both from the world of art and letters, and
situates his subject in his time and tradition intelligently and
fascinatingly. Not least of the fascinations of this book is its treatment
of the Cezanne-Zola relationship. This is a subject for a book of its own,
but having known the story only sketchily before reading Callow, I was
enlightened and riveted by his poignant portrayal of the characterological
differences which, complementing one another in the younger years, led
inexorably to the later rupture. This is a first-rate biography which
no-one with even a passing interest in modern painting can afford not to
have read. Callow is a master of the genre: erudite without ever being
pedantic, thorough without overburdening the work with unnecessary
minutiae, a superb stylist. It seems that some 400,000 people visited the
1996 Cezanne exhibition at the Tate. They should all buy this book, then
they would really understand what is going on in those canvases.
PATH
THROUGH THE CANEFIELDS by
JOSE WATANABE.
Jose
Watanabe is a Peruvian and cannot, therefore, escape the influence of
Cesar Vallejo, his country's and probably his continent's greatest poet.
He is, however, also of Japanese extraction and is not untouched by
influences quite different from those of Peru. Dave Tipton and C.A.de
Lomellini in their introduction to their excellent translation point out
that Watanabe partakes of the coloquialismo (use of everyday language in
poetry) which became prevalent in the sixties and seventies. But Vallejo
used everyday language too. Watanabe's poetry may show the influence of
translations from English and American poetry, some of it in very plain
language, but it retains Vallejo's sense of the fantastic, the unruly,
especially in the breadth of its feeling, so distinct from the narrowness,
almost pusillanimity, of a lot of contemporary British poetry. One poem
begins like this:
Nor
does this become the basis of a twee joke as it would in the work of many
an English poet. It's funny but it isn't. Watanabe knows just how serious
humour is. He is not a poet of the everyday in the sense of reduction. His
coloquialismo is not a plea to be easily understood or to confer with mass
sentiment. These poems are surprising, original in conception, form and
image. Tipton and Lomellini believe that he may be the most talented Latin
American poet of his generation and that includes the excellent Mario
Montalbetti. If you want a breath of fresh air, a break from the cloying
atmosphere of much British poetry, Watanabe can provide it. He is
brilliant and this selection of forty-four poems from his second and third
collections is as good an introduction to his work as you could wish. An
indispensable read for anyone whose poetic horizons extend beyond this
crowded, self-regarding island.
ALEXIS
LYKIARD: SELECTED POEMS 1956-96
Treat yourself to this book for Christmas and while the rest of the family play Taboo or Trivial Pursuit for the hundred and third time take yourself off to a quiet comer and relish its variety, wit, honesty, sharpness, anger, tenderness. Forty years of steady, inventive work. Lykiard ought to be one of our best known and highly-regarded poets. Why isn't he ? But let's not get into the sterile state-of-poetry mode. If you like poetry at all you can't fail to be delighted by this. He ranges wide and likes to play with form, but never preciously, leaving you with the sense of a life well-lived in spite of everything; a love of justice, freedom, pleasure, beauty. An excellent collection to be returned to again and again. KEN
WORPOLE: STAYING CLOSE TO THE RIVER
This
book is the account of Ken Worpole's travels between the end of 1990 and
the beginning of 1993. So it's a travel book but not one of those silly,
irritating things full of banal observations about the locals and foolish
attempts to be witty. Worpole's destinations are as far apart as Sweden
and Australia, but all the way ha relates his experience to the state of
the world. He tells at one point the story of a girl he went out with as a
young man whose father, a car worker and communist, saw no point in
painting their council house because he truly believed the revolution was
at hand and everyone would get a new house. Behind the mindlessness of
this, however, is Worpole's serious point that there has virtually
disappeared from the modern world any sense of an escape from the
iniquities and stupidities of the way we live now. I'm always suspicious
of travel books and I approached this one warily. My hesitation proved
unnecessary. This is real literature, solid thought. It offers no answers
but if you care about the state of contemporary society and if you are
aware of the lacuna left by the collapse of socialism (and if you like
swimming!), you will enjoy and be stimulated and even heartened by this
book.
NOWHERE
SPECIAL by ANDY CROFT
(
Flambard Press £6.95 ISBN 1 873226 22 5)
Andy
Croft was a member of the British Communist Party until its very end, so
History gets a capital letter often in this collection. He is nostalgic
for teleology: where are the great patterns in social movements, where are
we heading, what can we hope for ? A collection then by an economic and
social radical. Strange, some might say, to find within it what, in poetic
terms, is traditional. There are two longish rhyming poems PECULIAR and
STRANGE FELLOWSHIP whose regularity may be redolent of the liking for form
amongst those working people to whom Croft has taught and teaches
literature. I don't say this in a condescending way for I found both these
poems very well put together, full of neat ideas and nice wit and very
pleasurable to read. But different realms move at different speeds and the
cultural has forged ahead of the economic, the social and the political.
As a poet, Croft has, in a way, been left behind He shows little modernist
influence here. But he does what he does so well that it is impossible not
to warm to his work. He is a very accomplished poet and his rhyming verse
far surpasses that of some of the fashionable rhymsters, including the
doggerel that Tony Harrison sent back from Bosnia. This is not, in poetic
terms, any kind of ground-breaking collection, but it is a lovely read and
an important one because which other British poet has written about the
disappearance of socialism ? Read most poetry and it is as if it never
happened. I would like to see Andy Croft turn his radical mind to poetic
questions, but in the meantime I defy you not to like this.
BIRTH
OF THE OWL BUTTERFLIES by RUTH SHARMAN
(
Picador £6.99 ISBN 0 330 35265 2)
Ruth
Sharman, so the blurb tells, has a Phd from Cambridge. The trouble with
Phds is that they're written for duty or ambition, not out of what is
necessarily truly felt. There is the same feel to a lot of these poems.
Only one did I find memorable, and that because its subject is adolescent
sexuality and cruelty The rest feel for the most part like exercises in
poetry. Perhaps the academy encourages that with its clever dick essays
written to please. But only that one poem would I want to reread and for a
collection to be worth keeping on your shelves you would want it to
contain at least half a dozen poems that endure in the mind. Sharman is
competent with words, but bland, passionless, not sufficiently in awe of
the impersonal power of language. The publicity says she " charts a
journey of loss, fear and pain and explores the darkest aspects of the
psyche through fantasies of violence and revenge". But the language
isn't equal to this. The hype makes you think of Lear, but there is no
derangement through anguish here, just as there wouldn't be in a Cambridge
Phd.
BADDY
by STEVEN BLYTH
(
Peterloo Poets £6.95 ISBN 1 871471 68 0)
Steven
Blyth's second collection contains some of the poems from his first and
continues in their vein. It is easy to see why his work is widely
published: it's easy to read, makes no great demands, sticks with the
ordinary in both experience and language. As I remarked when I reviewed
The Gox, there's a kind of bewilderment behind the poems and the somewhat
faux-naif tales they tell. Blyth likes the narrative form: you can almost
imagine him in a cosy snug, by the coal fire, easing anecdote after
anecdote from his memory: "I'll tell you what...." or " I
remember this bloke " or " Last week my dad threw another wobbler..."
this last being the actual beginning to one of the pieces. Accept him on
his own terms and the poems work and make for a readable selection but
it's easy to see how this kind of writing might be difficult to sustain
over several collections. The danger of being a tap-room raconteur is that
you become a tap-room bore and while he touches on the tragic as in Great
Aunty Jean where the decline into old age and the loss of powers once
enjoyed and prided on is neatly and sensitively revealed, there is still a
turning away from the public, a concentration on the domestic or intimate
which threatens to become a defence against themes which might demand more
from the writing. I'm sure Blyth is heading for popularity in the small
world of poetry, but I think he needs to be braver if he wants to write
poems that will reward being returned to when that transient popularity
has faded. Nonetheless, this is worth a read and contains one or two truly
poetic moments, which is perhaps all we should expect from most
collections.
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