512
PARTISAN REVIEW
knot - so rich, so dark,
I
so dense a node the ache still bleeds,
I
still
binds, but cannot speak" are, in consequence, quite moving . Best of
all are the poems set in America. Here it may be useful to contrast
the opening of "Venice Revisited" with "A Hermit Thrush," the
masterpiece of the new volume and, to my mind, one of Clampitt's
most successful productions. The Venice poem begins as follows:
Guise and disguise, the mirrorings and masquerades,
brocaded wallowings, ascensions , levitations:
glimmering interiors, beaked motley; the hide–
and-seek of Tintoretto and Carpaccio. From within
walled gardens' green enclave, a blackbird's warble–
gypsy non sequitur out of root-cumbered
terra firma, a mainland stepped from
to this shored-up barge, this Bucintoro
of mirage, of artifice. Outside the noon-dim
dining room , the all-these-years-uninterrupted
sloshing of canals ; bagged refuse, ungathered
filth; the unfed cats, still waiting.
The problem with this performance, with this heap of adjectives,
learned allusions, and wildly oscillating tones, is that it fails to be
evocative and simply overwhelms us with a verbal opulence de–
signed to mimic the opulence of its subject. By contrast, "A Hermit
Thrush," which is also about a return to a place visited only at inter–
vals, assumes a calmer and more deliberate voice; it also makes a
much cleverer use of its setting, with Clampitt claiming explicitly,
on the one hand, that "there's nothing here
I
to seize on as exemplify–
ing any so-called virtue" and yet finding, on the other hand, a series
of natural analogues in the "thread of cinquefoil, tendril of the
magenta
I
beach pea , trammel of bramble" for the "certainty" (in–
itially denied) that "all attachment may prove at best, perhaps,
I
a
broken, much-mended thing." This passionate meditation-wise,
uncomplicated, deeply felt but almost superstitiously restrained–
evinces all the lyric power and beauty for which Clampitt's earlier
work has been so justly celebrated.
Moritz's poetry is much taken up with our relations with the
dead. The question posed with some emotional urgency at the
climax of the title poem - "And the real fathers?" - recurs in various
guises throughout the coll ection. "We were gods, once , father, twen–
ty years ago," the speaker of "Gods Though Doomed to Die" wistful–
ly exclaims, while a different mood animates the speaker of "The
List," who says, "It occurred to me that we should write down the
