December 8,1986
THE LANCE
Laughlin knows just where to find
these connections and how to bring
them home, like in "CulturalNote":
Page 9
Others, like the eleven poems in
"Ttie Delia Sequence," belie deep
er emotion and loss in clear simple
images!
unimagmed
connections
By Belle Crenner Gironda
Lucky for us all, while Ezra Pound
informed a young James Laughlin
that he couldn't write, William Carlos
Williams recognized his talent and
encouraged him as a poet. Laughlin
gives Williams credit for helping him
develop his idiosyncratic form which
consists of couplets in which no se
cond line is more than two typewriter
spaces longer than the preceding
one. Williams'own compositions
show such an interest in space on
the page as do Pound's. While by
description Laughlin's formula
sounds queer, it looks quite nice on
paper and also reads beautifully as a
St. Andrews audience had the plea
sure of discovering on Halloween
afternoon in the Beik Main Lounge.
Laughlin read from his new book,
Selected Poems, 1935-1985, pub
lished this year by City Lights. The
poet joked that no one else had
ever attempted to use his form ex
cept one writer who tried it, failed
miserably and then went on to write
very well as Phillip Larkin! Laughlin
is adamant that his work be referred
to as light verse. This is an apt des
cription of many of the poems but
some seem to transcend that cate
gory. At any rate, the tone and lan
guage of Laughlin's writing invites
you to come to it in a playful mood.
"Catullus is my master and I mix /
a little acid and a bit of honey/ in his
bowl love / is my subject & the lack
of love/" Laughlin writes in his poem
“TechnicalNotes, "one of the first in
the section of the book called
"Some Natural Things." That Catul
lus has influenced Laughlin is never
in doubt. He quotes and refers to
the Roman poet often in his work,
when he is not borrowing from the
Ancient Greeks or from Pound or
bursting into "American schoolboy"
French. All this borrowing and steal
ing ("Why shouldn't I?" Laughlin
writes) is done bravely and openly in
the best spirit of modernism. One
entire section of Selected Poems is
headed "Stolen Poems."
"The sources of the thefts will be
found in the back of the book," the
author reports. The effects of this
pilfering on the reader include, a
sudden feeling of being educated,a
sudden feeling of being uneduca
ted, and numerous sudden realiza
tions of previously unimagined
connections between popular cul
ture and ancient culture:
Persephone Wears Bluejeans
now but she's the same sweet
girl it's spring again and up
0 beila mia patria in Verona
there Is a special box In the
post office to receive letters
addressed to Romeo & to Juliet
they come from all over the
world especially Japan...
Like some post-modern East Village
collage a Laughlin poem can contain
Ovid, Sappho, Jesse Jackson, and
'1hat Hollywood cowboy," comfor
tably and sensibly in eighteen lines
as 'Thet^-World"6oes."
One discovers in reading Laugh
lin that he not only identifies with
Catullus because he"... knew a
poem is like a blow..." ("Technical
Notes") but also because"... those
girls made Catullus so miserable..."
{"ALeavetaking"). Throughout
Selected Poemsvje encounter the
honey and acid of girls making poets
miserable and vice-versa. Some
times the love poems are funny and
bittersweet;
Your Love
reminds me of the sense
of humor of one of those
funny plumbers who likes
to switch the handles on
the hot and cold faucets
of hotel wash basins.
Photos by Rooney L. Coffman
James Laughlin,
poet/publisher/skier,
speaks to full house
WE SIT BY THE LAKE
and though we are a
thousand miles apart
we are very close to
gether we watch the
water and the forest
and there is no need
to say anything but
sometimes your gentle
fingers touch my hand.
By contrast. Selected Poems
contains a section called "Funny-
papers By Hiram Handspring" whic^
recounts the adventures of a
Quixotic alter-ego who goes joust
ing at "Girls As Windmills," makes
love with his socks on, and has con
versations with the "Anti-Poet" con
sisting entirely of questions like,
"Who wants not to be anyone at all?"
before walking off into the sunset
"... to put on the feedbag."
Among my favorite Laughlin
poems are the ones he has written
for other writers, like this for Virginia
Woolf which behaves as well univer
sally as it does personally:
Will We Ever Go To The
Lighthouse?
We see it every day from
the shore and we talk of
sailing out on a happy ex
pedition we will carry our
gifts to the lighthouse
keepers but the weather
is always poor or the wind
Is wrong and year by year
the lighthouse appears to
become more distant from
us until we are no longer
certain It Is really there.
Or the masterful weaving of lines
from Shakespeare's Corlolanus into
"He Did It to Please His Mother," a
sensitive sort of elegy for Delmore
Schwart.', that somehow, by
acknowledging the tragedy of his
life, elevates it in these closing lines:
But still I'm not really sure, was it
your mother too,
for certain drops of salt, oh
world of slippery
turns
Or was there some defect of
judgment, one we
couldn't see
Which brought down the anger
of the gods upon
you, poor boy pursuing
summer butterflies
Yes, you are loved now that
you are lacked, now
you've become a kind of
nothing
Or Is there a world elsewhere?
James Laughlin, the poet, feels at
home with all kinds of people, in any
country, in several different langua
ges, in ancient and modern forms
and cultures, in his poetry. After
having spent an afternoon listening
to him read and having travelled be
tween the covers of his t)00k, one
finds oneself growing accustomed
to what at first seemed uncharted
territory. This is right. This is what
should happen because, the poet
tells us
... a poem
is finally just
a natural thing.
from the underworld she comes