Word: poeme
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Much of the most powerful work deals with war. There is a remarkable similarity in spirit between several of the poems collected here and the poems written by European poets during the First World War. "My Brother" is often reminiscent of Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est:" "...the enemy have not left us any seedling on our lands/Other than the corpses of our dead." Another poem, "In the Valley of the Shadow of Death," evokes the horrors of war indirectly, suggesting that peace is too often taken for granted...
Such pessimism would lose its shock value through sheer repitition were it not for the relief afforded by glittering and--to Western readers--unusual cantos like "The King in the Air," a poem somewhat closer to the vivid but unemotional imagery of the neo-classical tradition...
Equally difficult to find are Beckett's first published poem, "Whoroscope", and selections from a later volume, Echo's Bones. And with almost the excitement of a new gadget from Popeil, the anthology boasts a new play, That Time (1975), published here for the first time. Seaver doesn't overemphasize the short period of Beckett's greatest productivity, 1946-1950, at the expense of the lesser known previous works. Naturally, this earlier fiction, depending more on conventional plotting and narrative line, suffers more by the ellipsis--only the first three chapters of Murphy, a novel that is actually going somewhere...
...complex yet the intricacies of its composition are unobtrusive. He uses something called an Echoplex which does just that. However his music rises above mere electronic gimmickry. And the songs--instrumentals--are hard to choose between. My own favorites are the title track, "Whisper to the Wind," "Poem Painter" and "Talking Hands...
...Poem Painter" begins typically, with an echo and a shimmer of light musical phrases that remind you a bit of temple bells shivering in the wind. Then the percussion enters, muted yet enriching the sound, and finally the melody--simple and repetitive but constantly branching off in unexpected and spontaneous harmonies. You trace the saxophone's part much as you are drawn by a strand of gold in a piece of cloth. It glows and enriches the fabric and the fabric, (or musical backing) in turn, keeps the shimmer from ever becoming brassy...