A Fine Thing -- Rosemary Dobson

Guest poem sent in by Michelle Chapman

The recent Wallace Stevens poem entitled "The Snow Man" immediately brought
this poem to mind.

(Poem #1434) A Fine Thing To be a scarecrow To lean all day in a bright field With a hat full Of bird's song And a heart of gold straw; With a sly wink for the farmer's daughter, When no one sees, and small excursions; Returning after To a guiltless pose of indolence. A fine thing to be a figurehead with a noble brow On a ship's prow And a look to the end of the world; With the sad sounds of wind and water And only a stir of air for thinking; The timber cutting The green waves, and the foam flashing. To be a snowman Lost all day in deep thought With a head full Of snowflakes And no troubles at all, With an old pipe and six buttons, And sometimes children in woollen gaiters; But mostly lonely, A simple fellow, with no troubles at all. -- Rosemary Dobson

This poem may not show the same depth and complexity of Wallace Stevens, but
for me it raises the same themes... it has a gently nostalgic tone, it is
easy to engage with, and yet underneath the cheerful self sufficiency of its
images it, too, carries the same unspoken themes identified in the Wallace
Stevens poem: "the misery of human condition; the natural, emotional bond
between man and nature, the "emptiness within" of the twentieth century
man." Where the Stevens poem ends with a desolate, inevitable emptiness "the
same wind ... blowing in the same bare place", Rosemary Dobson's snowman is
an optimistic figure, untroubled by his loneliness. Satisfied to be nothing.
Wanting nothing more. A hopeful acceptance of the emptiness within which may
yet lead to ... something (as it does for the scarecrow)!

Rosemary Dobson is an Australian poet, born in Sydney in 1920. She has
published 13 books of poetry but is relatively unknown outside academic
circles.

Michelle

Sites on Rosemary Dobson:
  http://www.brandl.com.au/Authors/Rosemary_Dobson/Dobson.htm
  http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/rdobson.html

Critics Nightwatch -- Gwen Harwood

Guest poem sent in by Michelle Chapman

(Poem #1399) Critics Nightwatch Once more he tried, before he slept, to rule his ranks of words. They broke from his planned choir, lolled, slouched and kept their tone, their pitch, their meaning crude; huddled in cliches; when pursued turned with mock elegance to croak his rival's tunes. They would not sing. The scene that nagged his sleep away flashed clear again: the local king of verse, loose-collared and loose-lipped. read from a sodden manuscript, drinking with anyone who'd pay, drunk, in the critic's favourite bar. "Hear the voice of the bard!" he bellowed, "Poets are lovers. Critics are mean, solitary masturbators. Come here, and join the warm creators." The critic, whom no drink had mellowed, turned on his heel. Rough laughter scoured his reddening neck. The poet roared "Run home, and take that face that soured your mother's lovely milk from spite. Piddle on what you cannot write." At home alone the critic poured gall on the poet's work in polished careful prose. He tore apart meaning and metaphor, demolished diction, syntax, metre, rhyme; called his entire works a crime against the integrity of art, and lay down grinning, quick, he thought, with a great poem that would make plain his power to all. Once more he fought with words. Sleep came. He dreamed he turned to a light vapour, seeped and burned in wordless cracks where grain on grain of matter grated; reassumed his human shape, and called by name each grain to sing, conducting, plumed in lightning, their obedient choir. Dressed as a bride for his desire towards him, now meek, the poet came. Light sneaked beside his bed. The birds began their insistent questioning of silence, and the poet's words prompted by daylight rasped his raw nerves, and the waking world he saw was flat with prose and would not sing. -- Gwen Harwood

For me this poem captures the ineffable magic of poetry - that no matter how
desperately you try, it will not be forced. It may fool others but the
writer will always be aware of the gap between the object and the ideal.

We see the critic dissecting the poet's work with clinical precision yet
failing to pin down the spark of life. This inspires him - he is certain he
can do better - and in his dreams he does. The illusion is fleeting. He
wakes to find his mundane self unchanged, unmagical. His prose is polished
and careful. He cannot share in the carefree drunken flights of poesy and
yet he yearns to do so... I believe anyone who appreciates poetry has
moments like this - where the absolute delight of a poem's song in your
heart cannot quite shoulder aside your jealousy - why can't I write like
that???

There are several ways to read the poem - was Gwen reacting to criticism of
her own poems by mocking the critic... was she sympathising with those of us
who can never quite seem to pin down that spark (those who can, write, those
who can't, criticise).... or was she exploring two different aspects of her
own personality as a writer???

Schelle

PS. Here are some biographies of Gwen Harwood:
[broken link] http://dargo.vicnet.net.au/ozlit/writers.cfm?id=346
http://tarnish.net/gwen.html

Unfortunately her poems are under-represented on the Internet.