The apple-tree
Pleasurable thing though it is to knock
a sufficiency from a lower branch
with a trusty stick, as often you do,
it's yet more pleasurable still to launch,
cling and struggling climb. Then high up quite soon
the field beyond the garden's outer wall
stretches out itself, its grass - a yard long
at least, an invitation to a crawl.
Relaxing after the triumph of your climb,
wedged in a tree-cleft, you gnaw at a batch
of sourish apples, catch the blow cawing
of contentious rooks in the rook-wood, watch
the wind retexturing the earth's flowing
sea-hair: you and your world at a perfect time.
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From book reviews:
Richard Poole's book comprises sixty-two sonnets. Handling, and occasional deliberate dismantling, of the tightest form
known to contemporary English poetry is subtle and impressive, driven by a searching intelligence which quickens, sometimes
circumscribes, the "explorations". The sonnets range from almost bald reminiscences, never less than effective, to ponderings
on the meanings of the universe, our dusty place in it. With the sonnet as cutting-tool, wielded here like a surely guided
Stanley knife (one with flat, oblique, saw-edged, scalpel-thin blades) Poole dissects, slices, muses on parts of his
childhood, landscape (mainly Gwynedd), Earth, Creation, age and aging, love and Love.
- Peter Gruffydd in The New Welsh Review
Richard Poole's task is to effectively use the form to catch the world "at a perfect time", as one of his poems of childhood
have it. Many of his recollections of youth have that sense of closeness about them. Minnie Pickles "learnt me how to steal
eggs / from her hens" and shows him, too, how to get rid of unwanted kittens in a water-butt: "she said the dead go to heaven
/ but the hole she put them in was dark, mucky." This evocation of the awe and fascination of childhood experiences uses a
rhyme scheme in the sestet which makes "mucky" chime with "Minnie" six lines before, the delayed echo nicely finishing the
poem on an off-beat that is just right for the context. The last poem in the autobiographical section tells of a visit to
Minnie in old age when she has only memories to sustain her. This is a changed world for the poet too and awe has given way
to resignation: "No matter, doubt what I may I can't deny / our lives turn into words, and then we die." The world of childhood
where everything is so terribly real gives way, as the collection progresses, to a terrain that "has reverted / to itself, it is
not mine". Wonder, instead, resides in the contemplation of the mysteries of physics.
- Greg Hill in Planet
Despite the Renaissance establishing love as the material for sonnets, Poole's sonnets explore a diverse range of subject
matter from his childhood, his children, marriage, and mid-life philosophical ruminations on quantum physics, relativity
theory, classical mythology and the physical properties of the universe. Displaying a rigorous technical verve, the sequences
vary the conventional scheme of fourteen lines from the established octave and sestet, through a variety of permutations of
the traditional fourteen line scheme. Carefully constructed and with a measured pace of voice, there is a confident
versatility and intelligence at work in these tight variations on a form. Partly autobiographical, they are all controlled
explorations of what shapes a form, in this case the self.
- Tim Woods in Poetry Wales
Poole is naturally serious, cerebral; his "wit" is not of the passions but of the intellect: "So very ancient they are / it
seems improbable they were young. / Were they begotten under some black, sarcastic star?" He is a perceptive, thoughtful,
wide-ranging-in-ideas poet; one whose saying is limpid, whose tone is quiet. As a sample of the excellence of his perceptivity
I would draw attention to the childhood sonnet 'Girls' for the wonderful recapturing of boyhood's view of girls with its
perfect youthful masculine naivety.
- William Oxley in Acumen
...like Yeats, Poole exploits the unexpected plural of Autobiographies to raise questions of selfhood: like Eliot, the end of
all his explorations is to return to the place where he began. Thus we are prepared for the dialogue with poetic tradition
which the title invokes. Poole's dedication to the form results in a tour de force of sustained poetic effort, but these are
sonnets for the post-modern age: experiment, rather than tradition is the driving force behind this collection. Thus, while
every poem has fourteen lines, pieces such as 'Lovers (2)' which scan regularly, are rare. Similarly, Poole experiments
unobtrusively with a variety of complex rhyme schemes, to subtle effect. Some of the poems infiltrate the sonnet form only to
subvert it: 'Dawn assault (2)' at first glance looks like free verse. 'Lovers (2)' is composed of a series of seven couplets,
and 'Hedera helix' challenges the boundaries of poetry and prose. To those expecting Shakespearian or Spenserian rhythms
many of the unmetered sonnets will read strangely to the ear - again exacting the effect of establishing a dialogue between
literary convention and modernity.
- Edmund Cusick in Bulletin of the Welsh Academy
Autobiographies and Explorations may be ordered from:
Headland, Ty Coch, Galltegfa, Llanfwrog, Ruthin, Clwyd LL15 2AR
Buy Autobiographies and Explorations from Amazon.co.uk
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