Stephen Edgar

[David Campbell]

As an adjunct to Heather's Slessor post, here's a poem by Stephen Edgar, another Australian poet who was referred to in a recent post of Matt's. It's rhyming verse (a little loose in places), but the structure is different to that commonly found in bush poetry.

The Sail and the Gannet

Stephen Edgar

A single sail,
Translucent apricot,
Drifts like a poppy's petal on a frail
Breeze that is not—

A baby's breath
Of air sparingly strewn
And eked out by the estuary's width
All afternoon.

Lit from behind,
That fabric puts on show
What all of this, when the sun has declined,
Will undergo,

When like a dye
Extravagantly loosed,
Late saffron through blue river and blue sky
Will be suffused.

Hours that require
Only themselves. Suspended,
Division and the eye dissolve, desire
Almost is mended.

The close of day
Approaches: echelons
Of shade and light ascend the river, grey
And flooded bronze.

That sail's no more.
And out of nowhere looms
One gannet, sweeping up and down the shore,
In the gold glooms

Seeking the day's
Last fish. So swift it flies
And circles and returns, rushing to appraise
What underlies

Its beat, it brings
A darker note into
The scene, as though to match the darkenings
That drain the view.

Too fast its flight
(And slightly desperate
Before the urgings of the loss of light)
To concentrate

Its faculties
On fish, it can't be seeing,
You feel—or it's this shadowing it sees,
And is now fleeing.

[manfredvijars]

Thanks for sharing David.
I don't mind some of Edgar's works. This piece is an interesting exercise, with every stanza packed with imagery - beautiful, evocative and clear. I'm undecided whether it's a sumptuous feast or gluttony. Yet one cannot detract from the conversational language (and structure) of the piece - a near perfect exercise in imagery.

A couple of other Edgar, pieces I don't mind are,
"English as a Foreign Language" and "Oswald Sprengler Watches the Sunset"

[Neville Briggs]

I think it is a great poem, I agree with everything said here.

I wonder about something.

How would we go if something like this was included in a bush poetry spoken presentation.
The audiences for bush poetry that I have seen, seem to expect bush poetry to be rustic jokes or sentimental sad tales.
What would happen if we started on something like Stephen Edgar's elegant and nuanced verse, would the bush poetry mob's eyes glaze over and they just switch off.
If my impression is right, should there be some sort of effort to educate bush poetry audiences to relate to subtle poetic imagery.

Or should those in the bush poets community who work on such things just produce them as fine pieces for written competitions or books. Do something else for the performance.
That would be a pity, I would hear Stephen Edgar's piece in performance with delight.

If you know what I mean, I hope the question is not sounding silly.

[Bob Pacey]

Good luck with that Nev. Audiences want to be entertained and as you say this type of poem would cause many to switch off. But then that is only my humble uneducated opinion.

[Neville Briggs]

If audiences want to be entertained Bob, maybe we shouldn't call it bush poetry, make it bush badinage or bush burlesque.


I suppose David, that bush poetry stuff is more closely associated with the ballad form, Stephen Edgar's structure looks to me more like a means to slow down the pace for a contemplative mood. Despite what some people think, the line endings are important.

[Bob Pacey]

A good mix of serious, comical and in between poems always makes a good performance.

What's the good of getting up there and performing if it is not entertaining. Variety is required because the audience can be many and varied, I had a mix from young kids to the elderly on the weekend so it is always good to have a variety of poems to cover the occasion.

An elderly gentleman who did some poetry himself told me that the big difference between people like him and the ( what he calls professional poets ) is the preamble and how the poem is weaved into the performance.


Bob

[Neville Briggs]

I would agree with you Bob, a mix of moods is certainly desirable for enjoyable performances.

I'm not sure what you meant about preambles, but I agree that the preamble could make a crucial difference in the audiences understanding. I think that with a skilful presenter and a preamble to set the audience in the right place to view it, even the one by Stephen Edgar could go into the mix.
I sort of think that is possibly why David posted it here, to encourage thinking about how some things could be considered to go into the mix.

[David Campbell]

Neville's correct. Rhyming verse comes in a variety of forms, and I posted this to encourage thinking outside the square, because bush poetry tends to be limited in terms of structure. Judging a competition reveals a multitude of very similarly formatted poems, which is one reason I wrote something like Each Morning, When I First Awake...because it's different (and similarly with A Father's Prayer, which is also on the poetry page). There are all manner of patterns we can try beyond the standard AABB and ABAB formats, often coupled with the standard 14-syllable lines that Manfred is so heartily sick of!

Matt regularly shows us different and interesting ways of structuring verse, and this poem of Edgar's not only gives us some thought-provoking imagery, it also uses a quite simple alternative structure. Edgar is one of Clive James' favourite poets precisely because he writes in rhyming verse, and in Poetry Notebook 2006-2014 James bemoans the fact that Edgar isn't more recognised in terms of literary awards: “…the committees are stacked with poets who couldn’t write in a set form to save their lives, and with critics and academics who believe that the whole idea of a set form is obsolete.” Very true! It's worth having a look at the James poem Japanese Maple (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/ ... nese-maple) to see yet another structure.

There's much more than ballads to rhyming verse, and it's simply another area in which interesting variations can be explored to good effect.

Cheers
David

[Shelley Hansen]

Hi David

Thank you for introducing me to Stephen Edgar's poetry - it has not previously crossed my orbit. I really like the example you have posted. It contains beautiful word pictures. As for it being bush poetry - I guess it is a departure from what we would traditionally expect - but it has rhyme, rhythm and is on an Australian theme ... so why not??

I'm so glad you posted the link to Clive James' Japanese Maple. I have read this before and I think it is an absolutely stunning poem. His way with words is superb, with his perception made sharper by his terminal illness, stripping away the dross and leaving only heightened awareness of his surroundings.

In similar vein, James' Sentenced to Life is another powerful rhyming verse written by a man approaching his life's end. It is incredibly poignant, but not sad: https://austenreveries.wordpress.com/20 ... d-to-life/

Clive James recently said in an interview that he had always quested after "the perfect poem". Does it exist? Probably not - but that's no reason to for any of us to stop trying to achieve it!

Cheers, Shelley

[David Campbell]

Hi Shelley

Yes, Edgar's well worth following up. I didn't know much about him until I read Clive's enthusiastic support for his work, particularly the rhyming aspect. Clive is a big fan of what he calls "apprehensible forms", which can roughly be translated as understandable metre and rhyme, and he really gets stuck into those poets who are "less interested in meaning than in just sounding significant". James McNamara, who reviewed Poetry Notebook for The Australian summed it up by saying: “…obscurity doesn’t equal literary merit, just as accessibility doesn’t mean a lack of weight.”

Cheers
David