Poetry review – WITH SIGNS FOLLOWING: Rennie Halstead finds a tension between poetic craft and accessibility in this collection by David Ricks
With Signs Following
David Ricks
Two Rivers Press
ISBN 9781915048196
£11:99
David Ricks is Emeritus Professor of Modern Greek & Comparative Literature at King’s College, London, with a considerable range of knowledge of much of contemporary culture. Furthermore, A.E. Stallings, Oxford Professor of Poetry and a fellow classicist, comments in the Afterword to this collection, that With Signs Following contains ‘formally adept, beautifully achieved poems that exist outside of the fluctuations of fashion, unabashedly serious, learned and well crafted.’ This is a formidable recommendation, celebrating, as it does, the serious and learned elements of Ricks’ poetry. The average reader, who may not share Ricks’ cultural background, could be forgiven for thinking this is going to be a collection of difficult poems that will require effort and research to understand them fully. I don’t mind researching the poems I read, but other readers may find this an obstacle to their enjoyment of the collection. The book’s accessibility is not helped by the rather brief notes at the end of the collection which, in most cases, simply refer the reader to another publication.
These initial reservations should not detract from one key observation: Ricks’ poems are beautifully written. They are economical and spare, create clear vivid images, sharply observed. For me the collection falls into three sections: poems that are accessible, with no more than a little background work; translations of modern Greek poems that are immediately accessible; and some poems that require, at least as far as I am concerned, considerable research.
Amongst the readily accessible poems is the beautiful “Prelude”:
Speak softly when you are near a mass of snow:
A raised voice can bring an avalanche.
The guide who says so is the one to know:
The advice is well made. Ricks foresees the careless skier overwhelmed by ‘A weight of snow that’s waited up all night’ and who has nothing to mark his death ‘Except the guide, high up and out of reach.’ But there is more at stake here, of course. The careless skier creates untold disaster through carelessness, through lack of awareness, a reminder that words, like actions, have consequences. This fundamental human insight colours the other poems in Ricks’ work.
“Along the Volga Rus AD921” is a gripping, if rather shocking account by an Arabian writer witnessing a Scandinavian cremation ceremony.
The Caliph’s emissary had been anxious
To see a heathen cremation ceremony.
His lawyerly account sticks to the facts.
‘Which of you will die with him?’ was the question.
The answer ‘I!’ could never be taken back.
The poem goes on more grimly to describe the last days of the girl who volunteered to accompany the dead warrior into the afterlife so that ‘She could see her master seated in Paradise / And Paradise was green and fair.’ But reality is different. She takes the bracelets off her ankles and is led to the ceremonial tent on the boat, where ‘Six men entered the tent and had their way.’ She is strangled and then executed.
In “The Euthanasiast” the writing is very spare and makes the awfulness of the events even more shocking. Set in 1941, this simple eight line poem tells the story of Emil, imprisoned in a concentration camp and a victim of the Nazi euthanasia programme for the mentally ill and physically disabled. We aren’t told Emil’s age, but he must be young. The poem is so shockingly beautiful I have included all of it:
Emil’s cards from hospital: ‘Happy Easter!’,
This one says brightly, in a nurse’s hand.
He drew a rabbit, eggs, and a fat spring cloud
Which in a telegram the following winter
Had darkened and blown away to the far north-east
In the form of a frank. EMIL-DIED-SUDDENLY
While, in some lecture room’s sunshine of theory,
Unclouded, Dr N. warmed to his theme.
(Dr N, I conjecture, was probably Hermann Paul Nitsche, an eminent German psychiatrist heavily involved in the euthanasia programme and subsequently tried at Nuremburg and executed at Dresden.)
In the absence of any notes for “The Angelus”, I discovered for myself the Millet painting that inspired this ekphrastic poem. It shows a man and woman in a field with a fork and barrow. The barrow is laden with sacks and the light is fading. A small settlement, including a church spire is just visible on the horizon. The angelus bell, traditionally rung at dusk, is a call to prayer:
The bell is barely
Made out, like a spire
Across the fields at dusk.
Ricks muses on the interaction between the two protagonists. The woman’s devotion is clear. She is praying, hands together, head bowed: ‘she knows the time: / And their work is done.’ Her companion is looking at his hands, which appear to be holding his cap ‘A little nervously / As if in courtship.’ Ricks also wonders if there is a touch of impatience with her devotions: ‘He could be revolving / His hat with some impatience: / When will she be done?’
The fullness of the barrow between them is ambiguous. For the man, it could represent the fruits of their labour, and so be his gift to her; but for her, it could be a sign of God’s bounty, leaving the man unsure about her devotions:
Her heaped fruitfulness
Comes between them.
She bows beneath its weight.
Elsewhere Ricks offers some translations of Greek poems which are readily accessible. “Solitude” by Kostis Palamas describes the pleasure of being alone as a positive experience, the opposite of loneliness. This is a solitude to be enjoyed and savoured, an opportunity to put the cares of daily life to one side and focus on the core of one’s own being. The poet sees himself in a garden where he can shed the: ‘Graft of care / Gnawing at me.’ Being alone is: ‘a haven’ with ‘None to intrude.’ This is an experience he wishes to enjoy uninterrupted, seeing himself as a ‘Straight tree, grey timber.’
Being alone is also a theme in “Homeward, Late…” by Tellos Agras. The poet is describing his journey through deserted streets and squares: ‘with the lonely streetlight hanging, / a damp night wind blowing’ A flat accordion is ‘weeping who knows where – and late, / at some dingy junction, // seems one with my shadow’
Finally we come to a third group of poems which are more difficult and require some background knowledge. As an example I shall focus on a sequence called “Angleton’s Names”. The notes simply tell us that it is ‘Culled from Robin Winks, Cloak and Gown.’ Not finding this sufficient to understand the poems, I did some internet searching and discovered that James Jesus Angleton was a Harvard student in 1937. He set up and edited a quarterly magazine, Furioso, whose contributors included Ezra Pound, E.E. Cummings and William Carlos Williams. Angleton met and corresponded with T.S. Eliot, and they became friends. He also acquired some reputation as a poet, (though Google didn’t find any of his poetry). Angleton appears to have been a charismatic figure who became involved in the founding of the CIA in 1947 and worked with the agency till the mid-1970s. During his tenure he was both accused of being a Soviet mole and also portrayed as a ruthless hunter for double agents. In his private life after retirement, he cultivated orchids and enjoyed fly fishing for trout. He also suffered from alcoholism and eventually died of lung cancer.
Stalling’s postscript suggests the poem titles in this section are Angleton’s nicknames, which also reflect his interests. Thus ‘Orchid’ touches on Angleton’s passion for growing and breeding orchids, including naming a new cultivar after his wife. The orchid:
[…] glows like the semi-precious
Stones he polishes out in Tucson.
He even names a couple, one after
His wife – there’s classified for you –
But the abandoned greenhouse afterwards becomes:
[…] a tinkling of glass, a wilderness of mirrors;
Like the Agency itself, now withered under
A glare of hearings.
As in the poems already quoted, the language is beautiful. The phrase ‘a wilderness of mirrors’ a quote from Eliot’s Gerontion, well describes life in a CIA infested – as Angleton believed – with moles and double agents.
Similarly, ‘Fisherman’ picks up on Angleton’s passion for trout fishing and draws parallels between catching fish and catching double agents.
The master image:
Alone, casting
on his own sixteen acres, far away.
At the deep pool a fish, or just a shadow, rising.
Calm moments.
This poem also includes a reference to Angleton’s alcoholism:
Here in the chilly stream lie buried,
Every few paces, bottles of Jack Daniel’s.
Biographical information is also important in ‘Virginia Slim’, which relates to Angleton’s appearances before various committees to answer questions about his belief that the CIA had been penetrated, and in ‘Cadaver’ which seems to reference Angleton’s death from lung cancer.
The final poem in this section, ‘The Poet’, reminds us of Angleton’s friendship with Eliot, the magazine, Furioso and his own poetic career, all overlaid with the habitual secrecy of the CIA master. Once again it contains beautifully written lines; but something might be lost if the reader were not familiar with Angleton’s early literary career.
‘Gerontion’: even for an old man’s
Funeral, a rum choice.
The whole thing started, you might say, with a little magazine’s
Intentional obscurity. Some habits
Never change: a single lamp
Burning, papers always
Face down. Just once,
a poem of his got clipped in error to a report.
Almost a definition of the poet, this:
‘He can remember his own lies.’
Overall, however – and despite my reservations about accessibility – I do like this collection. The poetry has an elegant clarity, a cut-glass sharpness of focus that creates strongly visual images. Some poems do undoubtedly depend on rather arcane background information and readers may have to be prepared to work to pick up references. But for those prepared to put in the time this is a very rewarding collection.
Nov 26 2024
London Grip Poetry Review – David Ricks
Poetry review – WITH SIGNS FOLLOWING: Rennie Halstead finds a tension between poetic craft and accessibility in this collection by David Ricks
David Ricks is Emeritus Professor of Modern Greek & Comparative Literature at King’s College, London, with a considerable range of knowledge of much of contemporary culture. Furthermore, A.E. Stallings, Oxford Professor of Poetry and a fellow classicist, comments in the Afterword to this collection, that With Signs Following contains ‘formally adept, beautifully achieved poems that exist outside of the fluctuations of fashion, unabashedly serious, learned and well crafted.’ This is a formidable recommendation, celebrating, as it does, the serious and learned elements of Ricks’ poetry. The average reader, who may not share Ricks’ cultural background, could be forgiven for thinking this is going to be a collection of difficult poems that will require effort and research to understand them fully. I don’t mind researching the poems I read, but other readers may find this an obstacle to their enjoyment of the collection. The book’s accessibility is not helped by the rather brief notes at the end of the collection which, in most cases, simply refer the reader to another publication.
These initial reservations should not detract from one key observation: Ricks’ poems are beautifully written. They are economical and spare, create clear vivid images, sharply observed. For me the collection falls into three sections: poems that are accessible, with no more than a little background work; translations of modern Greek poems that are immediately accessible; and some poems that require, at least as far as I am concerned, considerable research.
Amongst the readily accessible poems is the beautiful “Prelude”:
The advice is well made. Ricks foresees the careless skier overwhelmed by ‘A weight of snow that’s waited up all night’ and who has nothing to mark his death ‘Except the guide, high up and out of reach.’ But there is more at stake here, of course. The careless skier creates untold disaster through carelessness, through lack of awareness, a reminder that words, like actions, have consequences. This fundamental human insight colours the other poems in Ricks’ work.
“Along the Volga Rus AD921” is a gripping, if rather shocking account by an Arabian writer witnessing a Scandinavian cremation ceremony.
The poem goes on more grimly to describe the last days of the girl who volunteered to accompany the dead warrior into the afterlife so that ‘She could see her master seated in Paradise / And Paradise was green and fair.’ But reality is different. She takes the bracelets off her ankles and is led to the ceremonial tent on the boat, where ‘Six men entered the tent and had their way.’ She is strangled and then executed.
In “The Euthanasiast” the writing is very spare and makes the awfulness of the events even more shocking. Set in 1941, this simple eight line poem tells the story of Emil, imprisoned in a concentration camp and a victim of the Nazi euthanasia programme for the mentally ill and physically disabled. We aren’t told Emil’s age, but he must be young. The poem is so shockingly beautiful I have included all of it:
(Dr N, I conjecture, was probably Hermann Paul Nitsche, an eminent German psychiatrist heavily involved in the euthanasia programme and subsequently tried at Nuremburg and executed at Dresden.)
In the absence of any notes for “The Angelus”, I discovered for myself the Millet painting that inspired this ekphrastic poem. It shows a man and woman in a field with a fork and barrow. The barrow is laden with sacks and the light is fading. A small settlement, including a church spire is just visible on the horizon. The angelus bell, traditionally rung at dusk, is a call to prayer:
Ricks muses on the interaction between the two protagonists. The woman’s devotion is clear. She is praying, hands together, head bowed: ‘she knows the time: / And their work is done.’ Her companion is looking at his hands, which appear to be holding his cap ‘A little nervously / As if in courtship.’ Ricks also wonders if there is a touch of impatience with her devotions: ‘He could be revolving / His hat with some impatience: / When will she be done?’
The fullness of the barrow between them is ambiguous. For the man, it could represent the fruits of their labour, and so be his gift to her; but for her, it could be a sign of God’s bounty, leaving the man unsure about her devotions:
Elsewhere Ricks offers some translations of Greek poems which are readily accessible. “Solitude” by Kostis Palamas describes the pleasure of being alone as a positive experience, the opposite of loneliness. This is a solitude to be enjoyed and savoured, an opportunity to put the cares of daily life to one side and focus on the core of one’s own being. The poet sees himself in a garden where he can shed the: ‘Graft of care / Gnawing at me.’ Being alone is: ‘a haven’ with ‘None to intrude.’ This is an experience he wishes to enjoy uninterrupted, seeing himself as a ‘Straight tree, grey timber.’
Being alone is also a theme in “Homeward, Late…” by Tellos Agras. The poet is describing his journey through deserted streets and squares: ‘with the lonely streetlight hanging, / a damp night wind blowing’ A flat accordion is ‘weeping who knows where – and late, / at some dingy junction, // seems one with my shadow’
Finally we come to a third group of poems which are more difficult and require some background knowledge. As an example I shall focus on a sequence called “Angleton’s Names”. The notes simply tell us that it is ‘Culled from Robin Winks, Cloak and Gown.’ Not finding this sufficient to understand the poems, I did some internet searching and discovered that James Jesus Angleton was a Harvard student in 1937. He set up and edited a quarterly magazine, Furioso, whose contributors included Ezra Pound, E.E. Cummings and William Carlos Williams. Angleton met and corresponded with T.S. Eliot, and they became friends. He also acquired some reputation as a poet, (though Google didn’t find any of his poetry). Angleton appears to have been a charismatic figure who became involved in the founding of the CIA in 1947 and worked with the agency till the mid-1970s. During his tenure he was both accused of being a Soviet mole and also portrayed as a ruthless hunter for double agents. In his private life after retirement, he cultivated orchids and enjoyed fly fishing for trout. He also suffered from alcoholism and eventually died of lung cancer.
Stalling’s postscript suggests the poem titles in this section are Angleton’s nicknames, which also reflect his interests. Thus ‘Orchid’ touches on Angleton’s passion for growing and breeding orchids, including naming a new cultivar after his wife. The orchid:
But the abandoned greenhouse afterwards becomes:
As in the poems already quoted, the language is beautiful. The phrase ‘a wilderness of mirrors’ a quote from Eliot’s Gerontion, well describes life in a CIA infested – as Angleton believed – with moles and double agents.
Similarly, ‘Fisherman’ picks up on Angleton’s passion for trout fishing and draws parallels between catching fish and catching double agents.
This poem also includes a reference to Angleton’s alcoholism:
Biographical information is also important in ‘Virginia Slim’, which relates to Angleton’s appearances before various committees to answer questions about his belief that the CIA had been penetrated, and in ‘Cadaver’ which seems to reference Angleton’s death from lung cancer.
The final poem in this section, ‘The Poet’, reminds us of Angleton’s friendship with Eliot, the magazine, Furioso and his own poetic career, all overlaid with the habitual secrecy of the CIA master. Once again it contains beautifully written lines; but something might be lost if the reader were not familiar with Angleton’s early literary career.
Overall, however – and despite my reservations about accessibility – I do like this collection. The poetry has an elegant clarity, a cut-glass sharpness of focus that creates strongly visual images. Some poems do undoubtedly depend on rather arcane background information and readers may have to be prepared to work to pick up references. But for those prepared to put in the time this is a very rewarding collection.