BOOKS
MIDDLETON AND MENASHE
TWO HORSE WAGON GOING
BY. By
Christopher Middleton.
Carcanet. $8.50.
COLLECTED POEMS.
By
Samuel Menashe.
The
National Poetry Foundation . $18.00.
647
Christopher Middleton is a poet of pure and private re–
source. He fishes by obstinate isles, far from the often academic
agitations that ruffle the waters of the American poetry "scene."
British by birth, a professor and translator of German literature by
vocation, Middleton has lived for the last few decades in Austin,
Texas. These statistics from his
vita
only partially map his singular–
ity. His poetic temperament determines the rest: Middleton is a
European modernist; his expression transects a Germanic (Rilkean)
lyricism with the synaptic disjunctions of Dada. Needless to say, his
name lights up few of our poetry marquees - modernism has never
really found a place in our literature. Thus, while the publication of
Two Horse Wagon Going
By
(timed to coincide with Middleton's six–
tieth brithday) should be an occasion for redressing the balance,
winning for him the readers and critics he deserves, things will prob–
ably not change. Idiosyncrasy and difficulty remain a guarantee of
marginality.
Two Horse Wagon Going
By
is divided into two sections, "Silent
Rooms in Several Places" and "Apocrypha Texana." The poems in
the latter section tend to be based in the geography - and, in some
cases, built around the speech patterns - of Middleton's adopted lo–
cale. Insofar as they implement a recognizable narrative structure,
they offer an easy entry point to the work of an otherwise demanding
artist. Stanzas like the following, about the killing of a coral snake,
are almost entirely transparent:
When I looked again
The small black head with its yellow nape band
Was pointing up and the mouth, opening, closing,
Snapped at air to repel the blind force
Which held him down .
I could not do it, not to him, looking so
True to himself, making his wisdom tell,
It shot through me quicker than his poison would :
