BOTM 006 | The Poems Man
Cover painting ‘Mountain of Hearts and Diamonds’ by Stanley Greaves
Title: The Poems Man
Published: Great Britain 2009 by Peepal Tree Press Ltd
Author: Stanley Greaves
Editor: N/A
Description: “These poems, some written over the past thirty years, but most of them recently, have as their focal point an act of homage to the great Guyanese poet Martin Carter, voice of a nation. They celebrate friendship and an example of vision and integrity, and bear witness to Carter’s role as the nation’s conscience in Guyana’s continuing agony of poverty, flood, crime, disputed governance and ethnic divisions. The poems also investigate the power of words and the necessity and sanctity of the act of making in such circumstances of disorder.”
(The Poems Man, Back Cover)
The Poems Man and Two Poems
#68 RELEVANCE
Must I live now,
concerns of another age
and solutions of that time.
It would be unwelcome burden,
like witnessing angels
polishing bullets.
Such things I refuse,
dedicating poems
to problems of this day
that seem not to sleep
as nesting birds do.
2005.
(The Poems Man, 80)
#13 THE POEM
Take time, take time,
statements made must last.
Vortex of words in metric feet
must never become
fictive plodding homilies
or grand deceptive allegories of self.
The wayward evergreen poet
with web-like magic
must snare bones and rainbows transforming them,
seeds of paradise fruits to poem trees.
1999.
(The Poems Man, 21)
The Poems Man is an incredible collection of 75 poems framed and unpacked excellently by the conversation between Stanley Greaves and Stewart Brown at the end of the book. Two poems in particular that stand out are #13 and #68 and this is something also discussed in Greaves and Brown’s conversation about the evolution of Martin Carter over time. In #13 there is a methodical sense of strategy of words and a value on time and longevity. In #68 there is this desire for the moment and an almost compliant attitude to the ‘…problems of this day / that seem not to sleep’ no matter how many strategic poems he wrote. Maybe this shift is merely a result of time where youth provides seemingly endless ability to think and plan, older age requires more immediate action as one’s last moment is never foreseen. Even in the second sections of each #13 has ideas of evergreen poetry and a paradise that awaits where #68 is entrenched in reality seeking only to avoid wasting one’s efforts on the unchangeable. This and the conversation provide a great insight in Greave’s poetry and Martin Carter’s evolution but there are also moments that reveal more about Stanley Greaves’ approach to poetry.
Dress
Stewart Brown: How do you come to the title, ‘Word’?
Stanley Greaves: Its about words, you know the sound of each constructed syllable, Word, the dress of poems. Words, concepts that you find in books, useless words, throw them away.
SB: ‘The Dress of poems’? When you read it earlier you said ‘as dress of poems’?
SG: Yes, that was right, “The dress” doesn’t make any sense. It should be ‘as dress of poems’, because it is all poems, ‘the dress’ makes it too particular.
SB: Also, as you have it now, ‘each constructed syllable/as dress of poems’ opens up the possibility of another meaning; dress as in masonry, you know, to dress stone, to shape it and give it a public face.
SG: Well that’s a possibility I hadn’t thought about, but as I meant it the syllables will construct the dress, so the syllables as dress ‘becomes’ the poem. So all the syllables together become the dress, so the syllables as dress is the poem.
SB: Yes I see, becomes in a sense the fabric of the poem.
SG: Yes.
The conversations between Brown and Greaves is equally insightful and a poem in its own right. While not every secrete is revealed it is a good starting place to revisit the poems one has just read before rereading them again with a new lens of interpretation.
Table of Contents:
POEMS #1 - #75
The Poems Man
Stanley Greaves & Stewart Brown in conversation
