TAMAR YELLIN
Early youthful poems (1976-1984) of Tamar Yellin first published in 2020.
My previous reviews of this author: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/tamar-yellin/
When I continue to read this book in due course, I hope to give some thoughts upon it in the comment stream below…
THIS IS PART THREE OF MY REVIEW AS CONTINUED FROM HERE: https://elizabethbowensite.wordpress.com/tamar-yellin/
November 15th 1978
“the wind has dug”
And we dig the wind.
And this book digs it deep!
November 15th 1978
“And I,
My books, my thought, will vanish as they came,
From nothing into nothing —“
Somehow an uplifting riddle to solve from such substantive verse. Gratified, too, that my gestalt real time reviewing may well pay dividends, if not tomorrow, but certainly this eternal today.
“Joy at the pattern we cannot change.”
February 1st 1979
Nature and Self inextricably twined together in stoical acceptance of pros and cons, moods and motions.
(Makes it seem less stoical, less bearable in 2021 with the hindsight of what our serially multiple Selves have imposed upon Nature…
Not a fair exchange within such an otherwise mutual synergy, I guess.
But, thinking about it, Nature made us, not ‘tother way about?)
February 4th 1979
“…ghastly black against their ghastly white,”
Like these written words that now speak thus, battling with doubts, yet operative with blue sky thinking to sway all naysayers.
From that blue sky to…
February 9th 1979
“We took our share of joy in happy climb,
And beamed upon the flag-of-Israel sky,”
A run and walk with a loving dog, stoical about the terrain of cars as well as the more amenable terrains. Seems both ironic and telling, somehow, today as I listen to the world news. Not that I fully understand all such matters.
March 10th 1979
A beautiful poem, but I failed to understand it. But that’s maybe why I found it so beautiful … by somehow understanding it on an unconscious level?
March 25th 1979
“I smiled wickedly — I truly felt”
A miraculously evocative account in verse of a trudge through a wild countryside of incipient rain, incipient or relenting snow, I wonder? Outdoing others who cannot or will not cross the same style as you into the terrain ahead.
This seems to be THE lockdown poem ahead of its time (and now perhaps in real-time hindsight behind it!) and I hope the poet will forgive me for showing the whole of it so as to prove the calibre of classic poems I have been experiencing over the last few weeks…
April 30th 1979
“How spring can come, and people go on dying,
And suffering…”
Another perfect poem for our recent times… with her mood on that April 30th in 1979 being of Spring feeling more like Autumn — and the wind now with asthmatic swell…
July 12th 1979
Strident modernity – symbolised by a loudspeaker on a boat – disrupts the more scenic and civilised tone…
Is this a way station in this book. A watershed of sound?
Most youthfulness should expect to be softened by a future’s maturity? Here the poet’s life is threatening not to be allowed to follow such patterns?
July 15th 1979
“To ponder on the horrors of unlight
For those who have no lamp to lance the pain.”
Probably one of the most devastating poems ever, especially for times today.
TO A DEAD POET
A strange entangling poem that makes us one of them even though still alive.
A Null Immortalis of a poem.
August 4th 1979
I dislike dogs, pets or otherwise, and try to avoid them in life and literature. Yet Tamar’s poems about dogs move me.
August 16th 1979
“Of Earth’s impossibility — the fall
To Hell from Heaven is not very far —“
Another remarkable personal and prophetic poem as global gestalt, and, indeed, it was not very far to fall from 1979 till now, yet it seems very far we have fallen.
September 17th 1979
A yearning to talk to poetry directly, even if metaphorically.
But we are almost as nothing in face of such power as poetry.
It is enough for me to talk, even if just virtually, with the poet of such poetry.
Each fallible in face of the other,. Reader and poet, the poetry supreme between.
September 25th 1979
A stoical defiance, a renewed self-belief after dread – we all need to read this poem today,
October 8th 1979
The word ‘yearn’ is used twice here as some expression of despair at the turning, yearning of the year to turn early or, here, late? This wonderful horror poem reminds me that I first encountered this poet’s work when she was older, in a magazine of so-called horror genre fiction.
October 12th 1979
The perfect complement to a poem I read a few minutes ago here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2021/05/08/the-glaziers-choice-charles-wilkinson/#comment-21912
An old man “Gazing at vacancy” if not glazing.
Seriously, I cannot explain how these two poems have affected me together, within minutes of each other – by apparent chance!!!!!
I cannot rush enough to prove it…
I like my son in law, though. For the record.
And this poem has some brilliant rhymes.
October 24th 1979
“It came to me on sudden, sudden days,”
This is a wonderful, wonderful poem and I am suddenly infused with or enthused by its effusion of exhilaration at the incorporeal words.
Just an instinct, but it tempted me greatly to reproduce the whole of it here. But I resisted, as I would exhaust any further forgiveness I sought when already reproducing a whole poem above!
January 30th 1980
“Life is a teapot — tea long over-drawn.”
Another poem the whole of which I yearn to republish here! It matches my mood this sunny day.
I have a scrap yard I can’t get rid of in the garage. Easier to get rid of me!
I shall dearly miss this book when I finish reading it.
March 5th 1980
A satirical poem on later Brexit concerns with immigration, here taken to the land of the artistic muses of Parnassus. The frontiers of genius. Philistines in a chosen land nearby? Or have I got all my analogies or allegories wrong about this poem? I fear I deserve no entry to the rarefied few, myself.
July 16th 1980
“What gave the world its poison
What gave the soul its mask.”
None of us will be young again, now.
A very moving poem.
September 6th 1980
“But we are just begun
We live in ruins too”
The paradox of existence, in oblique complementarity with what I wrote here this morning: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2021/05/24/the-friendly-examiner-louis-marvick-2/#comment-21954
If Creation never ends, so do cross-references, too!
September 12th 1980
“winter is our time”
Poetry, like childhood, is to be controlled as well as controlling you. Almost a rebirth.
Autumn’s Fall To, part of a pattern, but worth itself for its own sake, even if forever, I say.
October 6th 1980
“What a bliss to be
But anywhere, oh anywhere but here.”
The wind again, that wind of autumn and rain as remarkably “ranny”. What a wonderful word for the rain that runs outside my window today in real-time!
And the above ‘bliss’ described is going off in adventures of book reading like this. Enhanced by such ambiance of Autumn. Ironic this day of mine today feels like Autumn despite being in June.
November 16th 1980
A swashbuckling galactic poem with its gestalt metaphor that really cheered me up this morning.
November 18th 1980
This short poem has been the perfect complementary as well as contrastive companion to my reading of this Quiller-Couch story earlier this morning: here.
December 5th 1980
This is a short powerful poem, of unrequited love, or even unrequited sex. Or maybe a painful metaphor for the general passions of human existence in general. A ‘hundred tales of hurt’ yet to be writ?
December 18th 1980
This appears to be an equally short and powerful poem as a sequel to the previous one. Recriminations now abound?
A couple of poems you will find hard to forget,
FOR MY MOTHER
A touching poem, emotions disguised by words. A face we all need to brave facing.
And in 3 weeks from the date of the previous poem…
April 4th 1981
The disguise is lifted?
May 14th 1981
“I want things I cannot put in verse —“
But you have, dear poet … HERE in this poem!
Acute to the acutest pinpointing, I deem.
August 2nd 1981
“And the soul leans back again”
…and despite this, you, dear poet, have nailed it yet again.
This optimising of early love before it or you grow(s) old.
August 3rd 1981
“The sunlight comes like venom back;
When the long night is over”
This very short poem seems to sum up my mental and physical state today.
March 12th 1982
The poem goads me with God, and my near complete inability to choose.
Or to unchoose if or when I have chosen?
I am sure the poet will forgive me if I show the whole of the penultimate poem, leading to this book’s “windy gate”….
Somehow through the book’s changing moods, this poem represents what it has done for me during still difficult times generally in the world at large and personally within my own body…
MOVING (July 1984)
And the final poem now appropriately shows the darker, more important side of my self, especially my literary self. However ironically, it is the perfect coda to a wonderful poetic experience reading this book.
Two previous poetic journeys of mine: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/selected-poems-by-fiona-pitt-kethley/ and https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2018/03/15/touching-distances-anne-cluysenaar/