Selected Poems Book

The English poet Charles Tomlinson has undergone a long apprenticeship to American poetry and the American landscape, and has even produced a memoir called Some Americans. It's curious, then, that he's not more of a household word in this country, as are Ted Hughes or Philip Larkin. Perhaps he's paid the price for the lack of dirty laundry in his art. In any case, his is a capacious spirit, a journeying mind. Tomlinson's intuition has always been to look outward, to identify the object in order to make the inner self transparent. The tone is modest, the intonation subtle. He is invariably a man for whom, as one of his book titles reaffirms, seeing is believing. Something at the edge of things attracts Tomlinson's imagination. He likes to position himself in extreme situations, seeking out the physical side of extremity while keeping tight control over his verse. He makes the value of awareness palpable, and in his "language of water, light and air" there is a refreshing absence of the first-person pronoun. Indeed, having published his work since the dawn of the Elvis era, Tomlinson has supplied a helpful corrective to the postwar emphasis on the ego. Even the heavenly bodies are seen not on the poet's terms, but on their own, "like the full / Moon slowly given to the night, / A possession that is not to be possessed." --Mark RudmanRead More