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Antigonish Review
# 128
| Anne
Simpson |
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Poetry as Ping Pong
And Once More Saw the Stars: Four Poems for Two Voices
by P.K. Page and Philip Stratford. Buschek Books, 88 pgs, $14.95.
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And Once More Saw the Stars (May 2001)
is a gem of a book by P.K. Page and the late Philip Stratford just out
from Buschek Books, a fine small press in Ottawa. Page and Stratford wrote
four poems over the course of two years, with intervals during which Stratford
coped with cancer of the throat and the loss of his voice as a result.
He died during the course of their correspondence, so the fourth poem
remains unfinished. The result is a fascinating, bittersweet glimpse into
the process of writing poems, since the book contains the correspondence
between the poets, the poems in progress, and the finished works. More
than this, it is like being a fly on the wall of poetic process: the exchange
of letters between Page and Stratford touches on some of the challenges
as well as the pleasures of making poetry.
This "game" was initiated by P. K.
Page, after she heard Philip Stratford was recovering from a bout of illness
(he had just undergone seven weeks of radiation). He agreed to her invitation,
saying that the renga sounded like "a Latin American dance."
They based their rengas on the model of Octavio Paz, Charles Tomlinson,
Jacques Roubaud, and Edoardo Sanguineti, who met in Paris in the 1960s
to write "the first western renga." The renga
is originally a Japanese form, and it depended on the collaboration of
three or four poets sitting together to compose successive stanzas of
one poem or a series of poems.
Four years ago, when I collaborated on several
rough rengas - with Ken Babstock, Marlene Cookshaw, and Sue Goyette
- the exacting, exhilarating work of writing them was a novel experience.
We simply wrote a line each and passed it along to the next person, yet
we had to bridge what went before and anticipate what might follow. In
the case of P. K. Page and Philip Stratford, each poet alternated in the
writing of one stanza of a fourteen-line unrhymed sonnet. If Page started
with a quatrain, Stratford would follow with another one, and then Page
would continue with a tercet and Stratford would finish with a concluding
tercet. Had they kept in lockstep, Page would have started all the poems
and Stratford would have ended them, but on occasion one poet wrote two
stanzas, which gave the other an opportunity to try something not attempted
before, such as an opening or closing. The slight irregularity keeps the
pace from faltering. And the poems appear - in an uncanny way - seamless,
as if each poet understood the other's intentions.
The four poems - the three finished ones consist
of four sonnets each - are notable for their range and spaciousness, sharp
wit, intelligence and poignancy. The first is "Wilderness,"
and the scope of the first sonnet is immense, taking in the span of time
from the first living things - "dreaming legs…dreaming lungs"
- to the last, who "dream nostalgically of wilderness." The
second sonnet contracts the wilderness without to a wilderness within,
and in the third sonnet, Page adroitly compares wilderness to bewilderment
and loss: "Wherever you are lost is wilderness. / Bewildering your
bedroom when the dark / shuffles the furniture, dissolves your bed. /
With memory gone, bewildering your head." Stratford answers: "wilderness
is all we've ever known," making clear that to be wild is to be human.
The second poem, "Garden," (the poem
that began the series) shows two poets alert to the possibilities of a
game. One of the most intriguing is the sonnet of the winter garden -
"white on white" - that both writers capture as a delicate Japanese
print. Stratford's "upsprung branch, an avalanche, the hunter's /
eye targeting the culprit sparrow," has a light, spare touch, which
complements Page's deft handling of imagery. The occasional darkness of
his vision is necessary, lending depth to these poems:
Bent, broken, scarred, cut, decapitated,
the garden is a scene of devastation.
Brown, blackened, seared, shrivelled, cobwebbed,
you'd say the fiery sword had passed through here.
In a note to the reader, Page points out that
"his (Stratford's) demolition of the garden in the opening quatrain
of sonnet IV clearly reflected the state of his health." Perhaps
it is in the ravaged garden that the poet is able to let loose his remaining
energies, trampling and razing even as he works within the cultivated
confines of the sonnet.
"Sea" the third poem, begins playfully,
with the ocean a "riddle" of both thunder and calm. For Page,
what washes up is the story of the sea itself: "whales and mermaids,
sailor's uniforms, / weeds like ribbons, cowrie shells and pearls."
Stratford's last stanza anchors the whole: "Beneath, they do not
count the treasure lost. / Drowned kingdoms sing in harmony."
The final poem, "Stars," offers a space
so vast it cannot be comprehended. Yet this is where Stratford takes us
in one casual gesture, with the last stanza he wrote: "The night's
so still dozens of light-years float / on the surface of my glass. I take
a sip / and swallow galaxies…" He died some weeks after writing this,
apparently floating into ether, as if to verify his words. Page's abbreviated
sonnet follows, ending with a ragged cry that does more to emphasize her
loss than any finished sonnet could: "Oh Philip, do you rage in space?
/ Do you?"
Page's enthusiasm for the project - "I would
like to go on doing this forever. It seems to be in another dimension
somehow" - was matched by Stratford's engagement, despite his illness.
Their common delight is obvious in the poems. Indeed, this little collection,
together with the correspondence, is notable for its brevity and beauty.
That such gifts can be located in the tide of new books seems a bit like
finding small and perfect sand dollars on the beach: an abundance of good
fortune.
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