The Sacred Craft

Vernon Watkins is a prolific poet. While this is no sin in itself, yet it does look at times as if he could write a well-made, sonorous, philosophic ode on any theme whatever – a school break-up, the flight of a bird, or a rainy day. I think he has accepted the Welsh bardic tradition and developed his own modern variation. This collection contains a great many poems addressed to or concerned with other poets – Charles Williams, T.S. Eliot, HÖlderlin, Heine, Wordsworth, Keats, Browning – but I feel that these eighteen-gun salutes to brothers in the sacred craft become eventually monotonous, whereas the shorter autobiographical pieces are the best of Watkins.

If Watkins is primarily a very careful craftsman, Gregory Corso is a poet who relies almost wholly on ad-libbing. Perhaps in reaction against the poemspage 618 made to formula which flood the printing presses of American universities, the Beat poets are rarely erudite and often labour to appear illiterate. Corso is one of the best of them. He never mumbles. You get the impression that his actual processes of thought and feeling are occurring on the page, and this is a good half of what makes a poet –

Like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect
for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavourable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust. I want penguin dust.

I like this very much, for I often want penguin dust too. Corso’s poems are founded on an unplanned flight from the gregarious instinct.

Though there is one very good poem of social indignation in Susanne Knowle’s book, her rich sampler-work proves chiefly that English people find only England wherever they go.

1963 (298)