Jerry H. Jenkins
Other Voices by Neill Megaw
Beyond Renewal by George Held
Neill Megaw was one of the
generation of poets who, like Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur and
Howard Nemerov, served their nation as combat veterans of WW II and
as poets whose work kept faith with the poetic tradition that
dwells in and celebrates the world without becoming mired in
self. Megaw’s poems collected in his “Other
Voices” cannot easily be classified into genre or mood. They
exhibit the playfulness of youth and early manhood, and the mature,
sometimes wry, sometimes somber outlook of maturity and the
recognition of his mortality. The sheer variety of his chosen
subjects reveals an active mind, and a poetic style like the quick
and agile movements of a water strider, quickly skimming a world
which reflects him but whose surface he never penetrates so deeply
that he loses himself in it. His love of life, family, of the
playfulness and music of language combine to give his collection a
brightness and depth that make it a pleasure to read. The scope of
his interest ranges from the light and playful to the somber, from
the adventurous to the reflective, but almost always reward the
reader with some insight, inventive phrasing, and the sense of
satisfaction that comes from reading poems that have something
humorous, uplifting, even beautiful, to say.
He would be at home among
many disparate poets, but I think he would have been most at ease
with John Clare, with whom he shared a sympathy, perhaps even a
camaraderie, with the creatures of the natural world. His rather
extensive and affectionate consideration of the natural world is
reflected in his poems about the likes of a baby sparrow
(“The Lord of the Universe Visits My Patio”), a
squirrel, a bee (“Improving Each Shining Hour”), a
pussycat, a woodpecker, turtle, duck, and a variety of others in a
thoughtful and extensive menagerie. Then, as if not to ignore the
insentient and humble, he attends to a broom, a tire, a puddle, a
sponge, and a variety of other inoffensive daily articles and
objects. In his broad and dutiful coverage of the innocuous, he
follows the obligations that other poets seem to undertake. Why do
poets seem to feel the need to write about at least one inert or
slow-moving and inoffensive object? With Anthony Hecht, it’s
the giant tortoise (“I am related to stones”), and with
Richard Wilbur, it’s the stone in the meadow. (“The
sill of heaven would founder did such as I aspire.”)
Megaw, not to be left behind, places his stone in a creek bed
(“Stone in the Shallows”), where
Profoundly he broods, judicious
cannonball,
On life and death, on science and art;
He sees, he feels the tragedy of it all,
But soldiers on, old lionheart.
Not all of his poems are
kind-hearted, sympathetic, or tolerant. In “Near Miss”,
the poet evinces a Francois Villon-like sarcasm when he
wishes a long life to some disrespectful teenage jerks who run him
off the road. Not to be charitable to them, but so that they endure
the infirmities of age – along with plentiful dental
cavities.
My favorite of the
collection is “A Place Where Three Roads Meet” for its
mystery, sense of fulfillment and regeneration, and its
counterpoint to Auden’s “Lady at the Crossroads”.
In this poem, too lengthy to reproduce or excerpt, an old man goes
through strange and frightening transformations that lead to his
reunion with his parents, and then quick separation as he prepares
to fulfill a destiny the poem hints at but does not
disclose.
Megaw devotes several pages
to assorted haiku, and they fare about as well as other haiku
written by western writers in pursuit or mimicry of a craft and
philosophy sprung from a different culture’s antiquity and
nuances. Still, the old Japanese masters might have smiled at
this:
Inn closed for winter
on the porch a cold rocker
dreams of warm bottoms
Some of his poems are
richly fantastic and unsettling. Their details give them realism,
like this cameo of a billiard room in a sunken ocean liner, which
Megaw brings to life in “Aboard the Pacific and Orient: A
Dream”:
So this is where they gathered after
tiffin,
Or else at night, a P&O private club
Or secular chapel- for men, by tacit consent
The ladies neither excluded nor invited –
Pink-cheeked lads out for the first time,
Majors purple with port and the Indian sun
And as if to continue the
Kiplingesque reminiscence of this poem, he gives us a chantey that
might have been written by Kipling himself, or Masefield, in
“Far South of Tahiti”:
Oh it’s Captain Cook
an’ it’s Captain Cook
Is the one Old Boy for
me,
For Cook
was the canniest sailorman
As ever sailed the sea.
Further on, as if not to
leave any poetic vein unmined, there is a section of poems dealing
with the writing process. Such poems are seldom very interesting
unless they’re very good, and while Megaw’s efforts are
capable and interesting for the bright turn of phrase, for this
reviewer, they tend toward the obligatory, and seem more academic
than those in his other excursions.
For all the occasionally
sinister, foreboding or somber allusions in his poems, Megaw never
seems to leave the luminous and friendly sphere in which nature and
humanity are companions in a renewing symbiosis, in which light and
dark combine to reassure us, and perhaps himself, when we approach
the margin.
His poems seem to be most
confident in their familiar and comfortable surroundings of house
and home, family and love. In this arena, small worlds, rich with
imaginative creatures and dramas, unfold. In “Sprinkle of
Rain in a Long Dry Spell”, he describes rain droplets running
down a window pane:
The terrace window titters and I look up:
A company of small glass mice is running
Down the pane.
The last section of the
book is devoted to poems of family, age and reminiscence, and
decorated with several black-and-white photos of relatives and
special occasions. The section is charming enough, as in his poem
to his granddaughter Anna (“Song For
Anna”):
Anna, Anna, romancing-eyes Anna,
As soon as you danced into view,
Anna, Anna, entrancing-eyes Anna,
I went bananas for you.
This poem is one of several
in which Megaw’s musical and entertainment background exerts
a strong influence. The book cover tells us that he was a swing
band singer and a professional dancer. It’s a positively
sentimental section, but one that would be more in keeping with a
high-school yearbook than a poetry collection. This enriches the
meaning of the photographs, but dilutes the effect of the
poems.
Still, the overall sense of
the book is represented well by this image of a hummingbird in
“Afternoon on a Terrace in Mississippi”:
Lost in his labor, fretting and fussing,
burning
Calories almost as fast as he sips them, intense
As a coal, he decorates but does not share
Our leisure, his pulse-rate breaks all records, he
blurs
Our sight with the effort of hanging fixed in air,
Forging a jeweled calm from turbulence.
That jeweled calm pervades
the poems in Other Voices. Neill Megaw’s poems
are a tribute to his skill, his humor and humanity, and a welcome
and friendly addition to any bookshelf. I recommend Other
Voices with enthusiasm.
***
Appreciation of the poems
in George Held’s collection “Beyond Renewal” is
an acquired taste, like learning to like coffee, olives, wine and
cheese. At first reading, I was a bit standoffish about the poems,
but with repeated readings, they begin to make a meal not
altogether unpleasant. The book is a Pilgrim's Progress through
three phases, each separately titled, (Beyond Renewal, The Age of
Nullity, and Eros Turannos) from childhood's traumas, through the
disappointments and realities of the Vietnam era, into an early,
perhaps premature, old age of the spirit.
There are no lighthearted
poems here; each is a recounting of some disappointment, petty
rebellion, hopelessness, failed ventures, lost opportunities or
other personal sadness that contributes to the ambient gloom of
hopeless lives and loveless, banal sex.
Still, some of the poems
are attractive. “Something's Missing” is a convincing
exploration, in subtle rhyme, of the possibility or even reality
that one's life is incomplete. The unrhymed sonnet
“Prey for Love” is unusually good, with its stark
imagery and concept of the lover as a sudden, devouring bird of
prey. “Manual Destiny” is a strong reflection on the
effect of a father’s suicide, told in stark, simple and
memorable terms. Indeed, all of the poems in this collection share
that trait, but their effect is diluted by their presentation, in
which they occasionally employ variations on frequently-heard or
familiar phrases, and their usage endows them with pun-like
qualities that sometimes vitiate the seriousness of the poem that
employs them, as in “where sex rears its randy head” in
the poem “Hogwash”. The poems occasionally use trendy
phrases and conventions, as in the phrase "That said", in
“False Security”, and the equally trendy ampersands in
“Come and Go”.
Occasionally, a poem
emerges out of the pattern that catches our attention. “The
Sniper” describes, then reflects on the role of the sniper as
being “at the top of the chain,…sans sympathy, sans
empathy, sans guilt.” However, this is followed by
“Another Fall”, another sniper poem on the
assassination of John Kennedy, and the juxtaposition enervates both
poems. Next comes “From Nam to Armageddon”, a
typical poem on the Vietnam Vet, stylized and wretched object of
scorn, pity and betrayal, and the effect of these poems is to
create a fashionable anomie.
“Salamander
Love” could be the keynote poem for the collection, as it
concludes: “save us from this long drawn out and ultimately
fruitless fuck”. The collection is an endless, occasionally
boring monologue that leads the reader through the introspection
of a character who can't quite seem to rise above it all. But
as a character study, it provides a fairly comprehensive, if
depressing, view of one who has done it all, seen it all, has
forgotten what a thrill feels like, and doesn’t mind letting
us know at each opportunity.
George Held is a writer of
considerable talent and scope, and his poems in this collection
suggest that there is more voice and talent than is presented here.
If the collection was designed to create its impression of
dejection and ennui, then it is a skillful choice.
