Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

The general rule seems to be that when science and poetry meet there is a gloomy fixture. A clear-cut profession on one part — but a second hand sentiment on the other. Mr. Rakosi has studied law and medicine — both regular and disciplined subjects, but has not let himself slip into the most obvious track of softness and eventually — mush. The man of law must always be keen, on the lookout for a new opening — these poems (despite any age limit put on them being started in the 30's) are fresh and sharp invective on the rigidity of the world. He cures. His medicine is quick work, and as colourful as the bottles in the pharmacy. We are switched from the historical ideal world of finery, to a burlesque view of society:

                      Bless the white throat
                      of this lady
                      drinking clabber milk
                      at a buffet lunch.
                                         ('Amulet')
 
It is a let-down, but we are put back with a gentle hand, with light irony, Mr. Rakosi is not aggressively intellectual as we might expect. His lines are not so condensed as to be indistinguishable — they are taut enough, and true. From the turn of 1900, artist and poet have tended to look into themselves more and more for the vital response. The poems here set out feelers into the running world, and mix it with private anxiety. There is the optimism in his voice of a man at odds not only with society, but with himself — and he laughs at himself as well as at society. In 'Young Girl':

                      Such bitter-sweet discombobulations
                      In a moment turn men into Pierrots.

His ear is refined. His final sense is one of common respect and love. His accent is his own, and he strips everything down to naked element. His use of under-statement is simple:

                     What have I brought home
                     in the skin of the sea cucumber
                     that look like wheels and anchors
                     under the microscope?
                                         ('The Creator'.)

His technique and voice is similar to the Czech poet, Miroslav Holub, who claims to have learnt free verse from Carlos Williams. Holub's poem, 'In the Microscope', ends in a similar way:

                     Here too are cemeteries,
                     fame and snow.
                     And I hear murmuring,
                     the revolt of immense estates.

Rakosi growls at the society he rejected. In 'Man at Work' he again is simple, but provocative:

                     This is the grub of scholars
                     and the final
                     sawdust of the absolute.

The words 'grub' and 'sawdust' are beautifully apt, here, with the connection with 'grubby', perhaps implying little children at school. He is also a lawyer in his poems, in defence of the innocents. In 'Time to Kill':

                     An old man
                     tips his straw hat
                     down to shade
                                      his eyes,
                     pulls up his fishline
                     and moves on
                     to a new spot.
                     The poor small
                     wood louse
                     crawls along
                     the bark ridge
                     for his life

He presents us with a jungle of clear facts — of flowers, certainly. And in the confusion of his spectrum, it is the single incident he is concerned with — even perhaps the underdog — and in speaking for one man, he speaks of many; again like Holub, whose poems are charged with hope and expectation. In 'A Boy's Head' Holub declares:

                     I believe
                     that only what cannot be trimmed
                     is a head.
                     There is much promise
                     in the circumstance
                     that so many people have heads.

Only once did I see any echo of Williams — in 'Range in Ancient China' — but that is hardly noticeable, and unfair on a poet who is his own origin. He plays words and sets them on the air like kiddies flick marbles on the pavement, hot with July, poems free of inhibitions, that stream into the ear. His power to paint is as clear and untroubled as a child's painting. But his issues are greater:

                     Prick him in his little finger
                     and he becomes the very foreskin of an anti-Jew.
                                         ('Four Characters and a Place 
                                         in The Merchant of Venice'.)

His Shylock is Holub's Polonius who

                     slinks up the stairs,
                     oozes from the ceiling,
                     floats through the door
                     ready to give evidence.

His songs are not his song only — they are the songs of any man, of a young bridegroom, a warrior or sportsman. In 'A Journey Away', 7, he says:

                                      Tomorrow
                     another bullfight
                                      and the gall irk
                     of canard and skeptic.
                     Keep the whisky from me.

The whisky might be Death — something satisfying and bitter at once. Optimism, love, a common humanity, a precision of justice, colour, light, pollen smell — Mr. Rakosi explodes silently and colourfully on eye and ear. Above all, this man is honest.