Vernon Watkins (1906-1967) was a Welsh poet, translator and painter. During his lifetime he was highly regarded, though never at the height of fashion. He has since been rather neglected, unlike his friend and fellow Welshman, Dylan Thomas. Watkins took poetry very seriously, from his ealiest years: "I was already writing poems when I was seven or eight, and between that age and twelve bought the English poets one by one". These early years were marked by great ambition and determination to become recognised, but he came to care little, if not at all, for fame or recognition, only for the vision and craftsmanship needed in all good poetry. This is grounded, in Watkins' verse, in an uncompromising modernity, at the same time as drawing on tradition. As he said: "The fountain, what is it? What is ancient, what is fresh".
Here is a sonnet he wrote about poetry itself, from Fidelities (1967):
The prose purveyors of doubt,
the dismantlers of
Ecstasy, who traffic without a
god
In broken metre, would have
their Pegasus shod
Wth discord, not strict
numbers. At love they scoff,
And then, in the revolution of
anti-love,
Unsheathe chaos, the death of
the period,
While a new Sibyl, shrieking
above her tripod,
Proclaims transformation,
treachery, trough.
Yet even the disenchanted,
disordered, fret
For lost order. Breakers
recall rhyme,
Anchors weighed, and divine
proportions set.
As hawk hovers, as compass
needle in time
Flies unswerving, steadied,
where the stars climb,
Fixed laws hallow what none
can forget.
No comments:
Post a Comment