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| "A newly discovered poem by Coleridge was reported
to be written in the poet's blood on parchment made from a piece
of his own skin. Metaphorically speaking, all Martin Seymour-Smith's
work is like that. His collection Wilderness: 36 Poems 1972-1993
has a quality of necessity which make it stand out.
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| "To readers of poems, Seymour-Smith is valued most
highly as a poet. His Tea With Miss Stockport (1963)
bears any amount of rereading, full of verse in a variety of
modes all characterised by vivacity of tone and exactness of
expression. Reminiscences of Norma (1971) was darker
and more uneven, but the sequence giving that volume its title
seemed inspired in its power to touch to the quick. Since then,
silence. No poems in magazines; few in anthologies.
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| "But in the meantime Seymour-Smith has become well-known
to a wider public as biographer and critic. His lives of Hardy
and Graves, like his encyclopaedic Guide to Modern World
Literature, engage their readers in his own passion for
poetry, his understanding of its mystery and its cost in human
tears. |
| "That Seymour-Smith does see poetry as a mystery,
an inspired use of language, a form of saying not to be willed,
could be demonstrated by the fewness of the poems in Wilderness,
as well as by their intense and memorable concentration. Here,
plainly, is a poet who write poems only when he has that to
say which can be said no other way. Welcoming this, we should
not talk of reticence. Even metaphorically speaking, a man has
only so much blood and skin. |
| "The Internal Saboteur speaks of the poet's
wish "to make my heart into the thinking part". He
succeeds best in this high calling in the love poems which begin
and end the book, in the poignant lyricism of Eyebright
and Chrysanthemums (who would have thought an English
poet could find something new to say about flowers), and perhaps
most eloquently, in a magical dream-narrative poem called Appetite
of Quiet Enchantment. |
| It was C.H. Sisson who wrote once that Seymour-Smith's
poetry is "the common speech of a highly sophisticated
mind", comparing him to Henry Vaughan both in kind and
quality. Wilderness confirms those suggestions. Anyone
who cares for English poetry will want it. |
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The Times July 1995
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by Robert Nye
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