Penguin Modern Poets 6

Anonymous (ed.)

Perhaps I have a different definition of “modern” than do the august body that make up Penguin Books. Perhaps they just meant contemporary poets. Forty years after Breton's “Surrealist Manifesto,” nine after the emergence of the beats, there is nothing modern about the poems presented herein.

The sixth volumes of Penguin's series takes works from three authors, Jack Clemo, Edward Lucie-Smith, and George MacBeth, and compiles them in one volume. All of Clemo's and MacBeth's work are taken from one volume by each, while Lucie-Smith's comes half from one book, half from the other.

Clemo's work is trite rhyme with a distinctive “thud” at the end of each line, the kind of poetry that can lull a reader to sleep when he's suffering from a particularly nasty bout of insomnia; the poetic equivalent of Mantovani, if you will. But every once in a while, Clemo, normally obsessed with Christ and clay (not necessarily in that order), will pop out a line or an image so fascinating that one cannot help but keep reading to see if he can come up with a whole poem as good as, for example, “The dark and stubborn mood/Of Him Whose feet are bare upon the mire… Would not be understood/By worshippers of beauty toned and shaped/To flower or hymn.”

MacBeth's poetry has an odd, pleasing dadaesque quality about it that is, unfortunately, ruined by the authors' notes at the back of the book, the printed equivalent of a poet at a reading starting off by saying “this poem is about…” and droning on for five minutes about what the poem is supposed to mean. You would do well to ignore the final few pages containing these notes and draw your own conclusions.

Lucie-Smith's work is the most intriguing, and certainly the best reason for getting your hands on this book. It is painfully obvious where the division between the work from the older A Tropical Childhood ends and the newer A Group Anthology begins. The older work is almost indistinguishable from Clemo's, save that Lucie-Smith is not quite as Christ-obsessed (and not with clay at all), and that erotic verse comes more naturally to Lucie-Smith. The newer work, on the other hand, is radically different. Lucie-Smoth went from such things as “”His blasphemies are matters of technique,/Chisels and hammers. I am cross- grained teak…” (from “Drill Sergeant”) to

…The children come
With their lamps, for money guiding the
Curious, and for malice in their
Piping voices asking their single
Question: ‘Sibyl, what do you wish?'
And the jaw moves, the tongue moistens, and
'I wish to die,' I croak, ‘I wish to
Die.'…
(“Meditation of the Sibyl”)

The ultimate object of any poetic anthology is to get the reader to buy the work of the authors contained therein. This one is a spectacular success, where Lucie-Smith's post-1962 work is concerned, and could have been a mild success with George MacBeth; overall, however, one still wonders what the aforementioned august body was thinking.