North

by Tony Towle

library binding hardcover

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published December 1, 1970

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poem


A skylight of wire and glass with a retractable roof
holds the pan of boiling thoughts,
bubbles of air freezing and thawing
come upward from the hardened concrete,
and lends a feeling of drama and steel framework.

We think we are housed in a golden dome,
with carved and trailing flowers, with nymphs
to draw close from the brilliant heavens,
in stacks of glittering elements,
our attachment to the people we know and space.

We move along in the space, its innumerable
walks along the beach but really New York,
summer, fall, blazing away
and nothing further from the truth.

* * *

Sunrise: Ode to Frank O'Hara


The gulls glide, in 1939, into the bonus of another country,
the balloons and machinery of all the Europes and Americas,
a hundred million words at ease in the river,
rising as I think about myself,
and in the history of my ears making a beginning of the frontier.

Ah the complete bunker of the earth and its dirt flying up,
across our view at the peak of the centuries,
pauses and silence as subtle as the wine of Bordeaux, and as words
coming time after time before the vigilance of your dizzying indulgence.

An incredible weight hangs today from my evasions,
you, and my biography which get a little endless,
your immortal heart disappearing endlessly in the crisis,
slowly to be clear, and quickly to be interesting,
as we stay in the tonic of the bad air.

So what is the distinction of the river drawing you forward,
away from the restiveness of a vast American poetry
which you created with an unfathomable love.
You will be with the few of the past great enough to talk to,
as the remainder of this century of poetry begins to suffer
and your work will burst repeatedly our silence of unbearable memory.

August and then December will close the century
O air of your dreams descending on my day off.

* * *

Poem, the Dramatic Monologue

1

The terrifying question was this:
What was dream and what was reality?
Thus day had followed night and night had followed day.
On weekends I listened to the call of the sea.
The rest of the week I carried on my research.

2

It is impossible to frighten a woman who is in love with you.
The crackle of flames and pungent smoke from the house,
our lips uniting in a kiss that tastes of blood.
Then I would wake up.
This time the dream was intense, quick, and brutally concise.

3

An idea obsessed me and I needed the shade of night.
Her sons are dead and her husband shot himself.
I could imagine them doing that and my veins
jumped with excitement: the incessant and threshing
roar of vegetation such as the wildest gale had never produced.

* * *

North


The green figures move forward and the objects grow larger,
explorers of the sky, exploring the earth immersed in water,
1967 with its fatal look of artificial brevity,
your life as if an illusion putting you near the window,
and promptly all the winds and currents ruffle the curtains.

The humid surroundings, a transparent lizard
under the leaves and stretching its rubber-like plastic
across the room, protruding with our European selves,
show that we valiantly dig at the earth, poise
on the brink of adventure, or blister the flatulent sky.
In other words you are held, amused, peacefully in the grass
o beautiful art springing to mind, as we are the supreme judges.

Or perhaps you have forgotten an important exaggerated phrase,
and your words spread over the stones in a pure grove of the specific,
and you speak only the names of the bellowing animals, plants and trees
which blind you touch; ships, insects peopling the forests, etcetera.
The labyrinth speaks from its precipice, its outline shoots in a curve
through the chemical air, in addition to writing the script.

O miracles of divine reaches and words spinning from infancy
and whose business and indispensable references are not known,
your story is truly a story to treasure, distilled intoxicant that it is,
saying that I am a synonym for the relaxed and drifting universe,
a mere summary holding my attention over the thundering firmament.

* * *

Lines


There is a forest where you are overjoyed,
absent with vapors,
and in whose teeth you dismount,
amiable in delight.

So that you can meet the love of your life
who wears the most shining dress obtained,
whose footfall is the red tide and swimming gulf
you have remembered.

She feels in her legs a crimson flower
attracting the tongues of fantasy
which prowl upwards with appetite
to the exciting gate.

* * *

Music


In the beginning nothing is congenial, not even the world
not even your notes. In the middle many things are pleasant
and even towards the end, bu the end is self-explanatory,
and full of asides and commas with people to clean up the room.
Then you feel that Handel is truly your friend.
His singers send you to glory,
as his music is a preservative, for him not you.

* * *

December


Here are the wheels of the new kingdom and here,
here are the radical tires. You believe me of course, a plant,
a cup, who have demonstrated affectionate indifference,
the blundering forest charm plunked you into, number 32.
We end thoughtfully, with three dots,
in contrast to the inertness of the ball.

In the discussion above I spoke of the inertness of the ball.
The numbers get higher, in sequence. A sequence
is a godsend, another cloud in the Alps and the air.

* * *

Poem


The sky is cut into sections and put on a frame.
Part of the sky is covered with clouds.
Machines rise and descend.
The portions of the sky blend together.
The plot requires a flowing river.
It comes down from the mountains.
A road winds parallel to the river.
Fish are set in motion.
The people in the shops are on the streets move.
The clouds go from one end of the sky to the other.
The arms and the hands are loose and relaxed.
Conversation comes spontaneously.
It is a few years later.
The nest four years show great achievement.
The remaining years are disappointing.

* * *

The Allegorical Figure of Brooklyn


The Allegorical Figure of Brooklyn is right here,
there where you're standing, and here's how it works.
The lamps go on and we walk through miles of parks;
the rain an the sleet are brought on, we travel
to Queens for two weeks of vacation; the sun returns
and the grass and farms, the villages of Brooklyn
continue to grow, and the spacious terrace and
oily sand of Brooklyn breathe, and are rocked slowly
by the Figure, and back toward home on the BMT
we smile at the tender Figure and wave goodbye.

* * *

Autumn


In the Time/Life Building,
companion to architectural regret,
a feeling wells up among the thirty years which fate
in a casual gesture
has bestowed on my person.
A crowd collects as I have fainted with astonishment
from the abundance fate has collected in its Western Heaven,
and inflated higher than even the stones
the seat of the air. From my affliction, through the crowd,
on the seat of the air, I see a little nip in the air
this September, which begins a walk in the park.

* * *

Poem


Custard voices and sunrise on the platform, events
which interesting or not replace some others.
One can see that you have had no practice
and that you wait for a train until the sky is orange
and the platform is mush.

We are taller on the average than our ancestors,
and so out buildings are also taller,
with a lack, morning and evening March and September,
of seriousness, that amuses this endless
re-issue of yourself, on the train wondering
why your ancestors ever left England
where they could sit and be English in the course of events
without the embarrassment of subject matter.

But after all one comes to a sand decision in the summer stillness,
sex, the great universal pleasure, getting up and lying down,
caught on to at once.

* * *

Poem


Here we all are, painting, poetry and music,
having a soda at our favourite fountain,
talking away and bloated with triumph:
For with bouquets and calling for another drink
we have won, the unfortunate century
redeemed by our sensibilities.

But remember that you are writing poetry,
and when the past wells up with its veil
it is only a line running before another,
and the draft from approaching January
a device to fill you with winter,
as the streets when someone dies are pages
and the television brings you to a quiet world.

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an award winning poetry book, but I honestly just didn't get much of it. The metaphors seem so random, you'd have to know the poet personally to have any idea what he was getting at. Perhaps if I were an English major I could have made more of it. There were some good lines and some of the poems made you think and feel, perhaps that was the only aim. Possibly the poems were meant to invoke and not convey, still a little clarity or explanation would have been nice.

[Madeline · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tony Towle's collection has reached its death in this modern century. It's niche poetry at best, early 40's New York drivel about city animals, women, and the inherent difficulties of being a New Yorker. Very self-unaware, too. Towle writes about other poets writings being "doddering, bloated with abstraction", when every line in this book is so swollen with itself and these damned metaphors that there is no meaning to be found anywhere!

I disliked this so much that the bookmark I used for it was a page that I tore out of the book itself.