The Iowa Review
Volume 15
Issue 3 Fall
1985
Review of "Midsummer" by Ben Howard
Ben Howard
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Howard, Ben. "Review of "Midsummer" by Ben Howard." The Iowa Review 15.3 (1985): 156-165. Web.
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Article 35
Ben Howard
Review
Midsummer.
cover.
In three decades
charted
and
his ambivalence
seven
collections
and exile. Born
Walcott.
1984.
Farrar,
$12.50
hard
70 pp.
of verse,
Derek
Walcott
and bred on the Caribbean
an
of St. Lucia, Walcott
Derek
and Giroux.
Straus,
has
island
Methodist
grew up
among
English-speaking
a Creole
to live
him
That
patois.
spoke
experience
taught
to
two
It also proved
and
mediate
between
with
cultures.
estrangement
a poet who has become,
own
in
"a single,
for
his
description,
prophetic
Catholics
circling,
who
homeless
satellite,"
accepting
the role of "colonial
upstart
at the
end of anEmpire." As the leading poet and playwright of theWest Indies,
Walcott haswitnessed the twilight of the British Empire from anAntil
lean perspective,
British oppression.
grace while
savoring Edwardian
detesting
As the author of painterly formalist poems
he has blended English and Caribbean
traditions,
the scars of
and loosely
an
creating
plays,
to Keats, Jonson,
to
idiom that owes much
and something
and Marlowe
in recent years, having
And
in
taken up residence
reggae and Calypso.
has discovered yet another mode of ambivalence,
another
Boston, Walcott
woven
form of exile. Dividing
his year between Trinidad
and North America,
he
has sought to acquire the American
vernacular
and to put the "small cold
on his tongue. Out of his
pebbles" of the American
language
wanderings
a
"magpie
phrase,
style," assembled from widely
some of the most distinctive
that style has produced
disparate
verse.
poems in contemporary
to the
One thing Walcott
has not been ambivalent
about is his devotion
has come,
inWalcott's
sources. Yet
poet's art. His
work Walcott
sense of vocation
and severe. Yet
is passionate
in his recent
has begun to question his own lyricism and to cast a critical
on
the
short
heraldic poem. And inMidsummer,
his seventh collection,
eye
he has created a book-length
both extends
the inquiries
sequence which
A
series of fifty-four poems
and challenges
the premises of his earlier work.
chronicling
a year
in the poet's
life, Midsummer
pursues Walcott's
inves
tigation of his black identity, his divided loyalties, his personal and literary
genealogies.
But
in
its gloomy
midlife
assessments,
its deep
self
156
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a
and its outbursts
of self-hatred, Midsummer
represents
absorption,
change of spirit and tone. And its linear, serial form, which has something
a
even more with Lowell's Notebooks,
in common with
daily journal and
a
seems no
content
to wait
for a poet who
turning-point
signifies
longer
moment
for the privileged
and the epiphanic vision.
If not quite anti
lyrical,
vention
the calendric
of occasion,
Walcott's
of timelessness,
the con
lyric poetry has been based.
be discerned not only from his poems but
form challenges
on which most
intentions
from some of his recent
may
statements.
the premise
In an interview with
New
York Times Magazine,
May 23, 1982), Walcott
that he is after "the casual,
longer revises his poems,
James Atlas
(The
that he no
remarks
relaxed
throw
of the
over a chair." And
in an essay on Robert
thing, like something
draped
that the poems of Near
the Ocean and For the
Lowell,
having observed
on a chair,"
Union Dead display the "casual symmetry of a jacket
draped
goes on to defend
Walcott
theNotebooks
against
their detractors,
ground
ing his defense in the English tradition:
Once
are used
we
poetry
something
unread,
difficult,
to heraldic,
poems, we demand of
anthologized
it.
than merely
We
in the
rummage
loving
even failed poems of those whose
great labors have
more
the real Donne,
the real Ben Jonson
grown dust. The real Browning,
are not in their
verse letters,
mono
in
but
their
lyrics
book-long
.
.
.
will remain
logues, elegies, and speeches in dead plays. Notebook
a mine
for hard-working
of
poets. Jaded sometimes
by the music
look for something
else, something
hard, complex,
poetry, we
the ore itself. Itwas this search that turned Keats inward
embedded:
and that Lowell
away from sweetness and bombast
and further with
each new book (New York Review
pursued
further
of Books, March
1, 1984).
turn away from sweetness
is to turn from the formal music of the ode
and sonnet to amore discursive
idiom and amore expansive form. It is to
to renounce
abandon
for introspective
analysis,
lyric intensity
exquisite
more
miniatures
for
ambitious
structures, where melody
yields to the
To
densities
of speech, and the line approaches prose.
Walcott
has not swung entirely in this direction. Once again his ambiv
alence is evident, both in the general concept of his sequence and in the
157
a
is a kind of compromise:
of particular poems. The concept
mo
own
to
series of untitled,
its
each
with
the
poems,
page-length
fidelity
if loosely gathered, whole.
all adding up to a coherent,
As the title
ment,
the
evoke
the
but
also
poems
suggests,
present au
tropical summer,
they
structure
in Boston,
tumnal scenes in England, winter
several poems Walcott
broods on revolution
concrete."
lava of military
ing the "crawling
a snowstorm
in Chicago.
In
in Latin America,
envision
he muses on Im
Elsewhere
to lost
recalls his Methodist
and pays homage
childhood,
pressionism,
se
friends and fellow poets. Within
the elastic confines
of Walcott's
quence, the poems can admit almost any theme or subject, teasing it out or
are as
and thematic
letting it drop. Yet the poems themselves
tightly-knit
as Keats'
sonnets.
ally singular
structure
of the poems is, in fact, somewhat deceptive?an
inveigl
a derisive review, William
In
mixture
H.
of
nonchalance
and
ing
rigor.
the remark that "each poem goes
Pritchard has dismissed Midsummer with
The
on for around
twenty or so lines of irregular length, and in such a form,
that occurs to you" (Hudson
you can say just about anything
unrhymed,
a
an
But
closer
look
reveals
Review, Summer,
pattern
inconspicuous
1984).
of rhyme, masked
elaborate
and
syntax
strong enjambment:
by
the heat. It could burn from a zinc fence.
forgotten
even the
sea front
stir.
quietly
palms of the
sneers at all
in the future tense.
Empire
thoughts
You've
Not
The
the shadows
Only
lines from another
of this inland ocean mutter
sea, which
this one
resembles
?
islands of olive and myrtle,
of analogous
myths
the dream of the drowsing
her temples,
gulf. Although
are
blocks against green,
and her stoas
white
hotels,
in time they will make good ruins;
shopping malls,
so what
is as slow as
if the hand of the Empire
a turtle when
it comes to treaties?
("Tropic
vi)
are
are loose pentameters ?nor
irregular?they
they
But
voice
here the speaking
subsumes the metrical pattern ("so
unrhymed.
. . ."; "when it comes to treaties . .
if the hand of the Empire
what
."),
retreat
and the rhymes
behind the complex
syntax and the enjambed con
These
158
lines are not
Zone,"
some of the
inspection
rhymes turn out to
or even rather dubious
proximate
(resembles, temples)
(stoas, slow as).
no more
than a muffled
if that, and
event,
sound,
they make
over song.
prevails
can also be seen
Walcott's
ambivalence
toward verbal music
versational
structure
voice. Upon
be ap
In any
speech
in the
of his
lines. James Atlas reports Walcott
telling his students at
a
is
"terror
that
there
in American
of
University
making music
on that
take issue with Walcott
poetry." One might
point,
citing the
as
of
such
But in a
and
Bell.
Nemerov,
Pollitt, Gl?ck,
poets
musicality
Boston
is probably right; and insofar as he has
ac
general way, Walcott
sought to
or to write
American
like
American
the
quire
poets he admires, he
speech,
norm. At
can still sound
has moved
closer to the flat American
points he
as
a
when
he contemplates
Caribbean
beach:
mellifluous,
uncommonly
the burden of our
light, make weightless
let our misfortune
have no need for magic,
in verse or prose.
be untranslatable
Go,
Let us darken
the stones
that have never
thought,
frowned
or known
for art or medicine,
for Prospero's
or
snake-knotted
staff,
stick;
sea-bewildering
erase these
on sand.
of
birds'
ciphers
prints
the need
(XLVIII)
But
passages
heightened
like
these
carries
colloquialism
I respect
Today
The overworked
stand
structure,
in sharp contrast
the day:
the antithesis
muck
of my
always,
when
the air is empty,
the resonance of what
is both
paintings,
I hear actors
to others,
a
in which
of conceit.
my
bad plots!
But
talking,
and wise.
ordinary
(XIII)
In these lines Walcott
seems not
so much
afraid of verbal music
as averse
to it,
the rhythms and diction of analytic prose.
preferring
But how far canWalcott
far is he will
proceed in this direction? How
ing to go? A partial answer may be found in his revisions, which
point at
159
once
toward
and
greater precision
no
claim
he
the poet's
that
toward
an effect
of casual
speech.
contains
longer revises, Midsummer
of three poems
in the
that first appeared
altered versions
substantially
in a third,
Times with Atlas' article. One of these poems
(which appears
as "Port of
variant version
in
Fortunate
The
illustrates
Spain"
Traveller)
?
line of the poem
Walcott's
general drift. The opening
Despite
Midsummer
stretches
before me with
its great
yawn.
(Times version)
becomes
Midsummer
stretches
before me with
its cat's yawn.
("Port of Spain")
and finally
Midsummer
stretches
beside me with
its cat's yawn.
(Midsummer,VI)
tune and
is ob
sharpen the line, and the improvement
lines later, however,
the revision has a more complex
and
Here
the revisions
vious.
A
few
effect:
ambiguous
as the armed
for lightning
in boredom
for the crack of a rifle.
one waits
And
hopes
sentry
(Times version)
becomes
And
one waits
in boredom
for midsummer
waits
lightning
for the crack of a rifle.
as the armed
sentry
(VI)
Here
the revision
verb
repeated
mic agitation
160
and balance of the original. The
disrupts the regularity
the
unwieldy
adjective (midsummer), and the rhyth
(waits),
a choice for
over
represent
colloquialism
melody,
speech
statement on behalf of
is reminded of William
Stafford's
song. One
one ever
American
for sure/that we would
poets: "Look: no
promised
to the
own admission: "The lines
sing." More
point, perhaps, isWalcott's
over
I love have all their knots left in" (XXV).
Of
when
as
lines do sing, or sound their trumpets,
that "the marching
hosannas
darken
the wheat
of
as
coiled ram hides in the rocks of Afghanistan"
(XXII). And
or coarse,
of his lines, knotted or unknotted,
betrays
polished
course, many
he proclaims
Russia,/the
the texture
an ambivalent
ofWalcott's
attitude
toward
the music
so his
of
deployment
to the
literal description
stance toward
metaphoric
of verse,
image and metaphor,
ranging from the most
most
involuted
reveals an uneasy
figuration,
one hand, the poems o?Midsummer
strive to be entries in
thought. On the
a
exact notation.
of
the
rendered
with
transcriptions
daybook,
quotidian,
to abandon
and linear
On
the other,
they yearn
sequential description
to intuit the numinous
in metaphoric
and to create
visions,
thought,
as the ocean's of linear time, / since time is the first prov
"lines asmindless
the two impulses
ince of Caesar's jurisdiction"
(XLIII,
ii). Sometimes
a
a
?or
even within
single poem
single line.
quarrel within
For the
he writes.
Walcott's
visual acuity distinguishes
everything
a
aCarib
is
is
the
continual
whether
his
catch
reader,
subject
eye's
delight,
bean beach, a street on Beacon Hill, or a railroad crossing in Ohio. An ac
complished
Vermeer"
time when
celebrates
the "lemon-rind
painter himself, Walcott
light in
van
a
of
he
and the "rust-edged"
and
recalls
images
Ruysdael;
a
Flemish
still life /in a book
he "brushed a drop of water from
of prints, believing
similar effects:
it was
real"
(XVII).
In his poems
he often
achieves
Pale khaki fields of dehydrated grass
the corn farms, straw.
fences ?all
peer behind pointless
so
A sky
its haze is violet.
huge,
Over gelid canals, the wands
of the pollard willows
into some small town;
the highway
fade when
branches
come in a
this
has
spring,
single stride
Sunday,
to Ohio,
but
skipping the thaw. It's still February,
the dazed hills couldn't
tell you where winter
the light is rollering thewhite,
of houses
in Athens,
polishing
the stubble
Lancaster,
went;
facing side
and Wheeling,
till it shines
like brass.
(XLVI)
161
of a high order, and it can be found throughout
is literal description
his subject is observed or imagined. As he re
Walcott's
sequence, whether
flects wistfully
upon "the other 'eighties, a hundred midsummers
gone,"
This
he imagines "the rippling accordion,/bustled
skirts, boating parties, zinc
outlast their
flushed cheeks wouldn't
strokes on water, /girls whose
white
In an earlier version he had written
sails on
"zinc-white
roses" (XVIII).
The
water."
gain
is obvious,
in precision
as is the evidence
of meticulous
attention.
Yet
forWalcott
visual precision
Edenic,
is not enough. Having
grown up in an
away
culture, where
renaming was
tropical, metaphor-spawning
of life, and amartin or tern overhead became "un ciseau la mer" (scissor of
cannot be content with
literal description.
the sea), Walcott
Metaphor,
re
than most poets, he compulsively
like song, is in his blood; and more
at
intricate tropes and sometimes
fashions what he sees, usually through
of clarity
the expense
In the thatched
every minute
climbs hand
and directness:
beach
bar,
a clock
tests its stiff elbow
an even older
and, outside,
over claw, as unloved
into his belfry
of shade,
swaying
iguana
as Quasimodo,
there.
(XXVIII)
one wishes
such passages,
Reading
ment. One
also wonders
whether
for a direct
assertion,
the conventions
a literal
state
are
the daybook
calls at
the daybook
of
a
cast of mind. Where
metaphoric
compatible with
to another
the metaphor
tention to the present moment,
directs attention
time and place. Before we can feel the presence of the clock hand or the
we have been
elsewhere.
iguana,
transported
Walcott
often
does
as he
aware of the
Speaking discontentedly,
problem.
he depicts
in these poems,
about the labors of composition,
is well
himself spending "awhole
life lifting nouns like rocks" (XL) and com
I read/or write goes on too long" (XL). Despite
plains that "everything
to
the book-length
his commitment
poem and his urge to create some
"the maundering
distrusts
embedded," Walcott
thing "hard, complex,
ego,"
desiring
"all synthesis
in one heraldic
stroke,"
"like Li Po or a Chi
nese laundrymark!" (IX). And beyond thiswish for intuitive lightning,
for the flash of insight,
162
he hankers
after the mystical
vision
and its atten
dant
language,
the transfiguring
moment
within
the matrix
of the quo
tidian:
the V made
Between
stare at the charred
Before
its firelit
by your parted socks,
cave of the television.
image flickers
on
your forehead like the first Neanderthal
a whole
life lifting nouns like rocks,
spend
turn to the window.
On a light-angled wall,
the clear, soundless pane, one sees a speech
through
that calls to us, but is beyond our powers,
of O's from a reflected bridge,
composed
to
the language
over aerials,
of white,
spires,
clouds convening
ponderous
water
towers.
rooftops,
(XL)
this vision of timeless speech rises not from the comtempla
Significantly,
environs of an American motel.
tion of sea and sand but from the mundane
Here,
as in The Fortunate
takes the stance of the "Trail
Traveller, Walcott
in angels" and seeks transfiguring
vi
"still believes
fantasist," who
ways
sions among prosaic things.
And to what extent has he realized
as it does between
objectives? Veering
bleak
fact and visionary
and metaphor,
?or
a failed
amalgam?
synthesis
Critical
Eagleton
ently
opinion
the book
has been
offers
a
sharply
"blending
casual,
such visions
his aesthetic
the poles of song and speech, image
a
isMidsummer
fiction,
triumphant
on
For Terry
of metaphorical
appar
depth with
a weave
of "concrete detail" and
divided
spontaneous
perceptions,"
reflection"
November
9,1984).
(TLS,
"global
is a "magnificent
or achieved
that point.
For Peter Stitt, Midsummer
expansive and beautifully written"
1984). But for Steven Ratiner, who praises
(The Georgia Review, Summer,
a
ear and musical
is ultimately
Walcott's
tuned
sense," Midsummer
"finely
volume,
thematically
a
of color snapshots," wherein
the "figure of
"scrapbook
disappointment,
the view" (Christian Science Monitor, April 6,1984).
the poet is obstructing
H. Pritchard, who
of "Whitmania"
and
for William
And
complains
in Walcott's
all sound too much
like
lines, the poems
"elephantiasis"
a
is
itself
"mistaken
and
the
Lowell,
sequence
enterprise"
(Hudson Review,
Summer,
1984).
163
views there is, perhaps, no happy medium,
such divergent
but
comes closest to the truth in
that
Midsummer
saying
probably
is "not 'better' than previous Walcott,
but . . . different and comparably
new poems do not offer the
excellent"
1984). These
(Poetry, December,
Between
Paul Breslin
and lyric delicacy of Sea Grapes, nor the rich brocade of The Star
nor the
colloquial vigor of The Fortunate Traveller. What
Apple Kingdom,
a
uneven
inwhich passages of great res
they do offer is risky,
exploration,
onance
must
and aural beauty
awkwardness
and un
compete with
elegance
certainty. At
when Walcott
seems more
the exploration
than revelatory,
dogged
sketches a humdrum
portrait of the poet shaving:
as
times
tired of morning,
My double,
of the motel
closes
the door
the steamed mirror,
then, wiping
me
refuses to acknowledge
staring back at him.
the softest grunt, he stretches my throat for the function
With
care
of scraping it clean, his dispassionate
a
a
unction.
like
barber's lathering
corpse?extreme
bathroom;
(XI)
of the double nor the hyperbole
the metaphor
of the corpse can
The poet appears to be recording for the sake
salvage this banal notation.
a drab
ornamental
of recording,
figures upon
grafting
description.
Neither
But
of his mother,
friend,
Cal's
his
is far more
Walcott
elsewhere
the loss of his innocence
or, most
language
persuasive.
or his Methodist
poignantly,
rises to meet
faith,
lamenting
its subject:
When
he
the memory
honoring
the loss of his mentor
and
bulk
haunts my classes. The shaggy,
square head
the mist of heated affection blurring his glasses,
vases
slumped, but the hands repeatedly bracketing
?
voice that has never wilted
of air, the petal-soft
its flowers of illness carpet the lands of Cambridge,
and the germ
of madness
is mourning
or
tilted,
is here.
(XII)
At
such moments
that Walcott
164
?and
is a poet
there are many
of uncommon
inMidsummer
powers,
whose
? one
chief
is reminded
strength
is an
to join strange bedfellows
and harmonize warring
forms. In the
a
a
of
that stirs him,
presence
memory
legend and friend who engages his
achieves
Walcott
that synthesis which
elsewhere
affections,
deepest
The
elements of speech and song, fact and metaphor,
escapes him.
join to
ability
form
a
compelling
whole.
165