Selected Poems: The Vision Tree

by Phyllis Webb, Sharon Thesen

Poetry distinguished by its attention to form and thought.

Genres: Poetry, Canada

160 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1982

Reviews

[C. (Don't blank click my reviews, comment please! · Rating 3 out of 5]

Phyllis Webb shines at expressiveness, relevance, and coyness. Sorrowful, bleak, cryptic poetry hang lower on my list but she has numerous titles that I’m certain I would enjoy more than some I’ve sampled herein. Phyllis, born in 1927, commands a high seat in this vehicle. Poetry is a strong expression in all spectrums and must frequently be cryptic. Only the poetess knows what inspires her verse. I enjoy clear phrases, whatever the tone. If images or moods evoke beauty and joy; that suffices. Flow, general significance, effect, colour.... move me and need no deciphering.

Notes do accompany this body of work. I glanced over them. It would behove me to read them all. Pivotal circumstances drove a range of these poems. I’m pleased for her, that pouring them into a published outlet, offered a healing balm. Reading about the lady is especially worthwhile. She appears to share my spirituality, stepped politely away from religion. She is cited as explaining it is too patriarchal and our literature and critics too, have been tipped too far towards men.

Halfway into “Selected Poems: The Vision Tree” are several in a row I like a great deal: “Naked Poems”, 1965. These made me laugh, for in them Phyllis is cheeky! Many are entirely a coy question posed to a lover! When a genre isn’t our usual fare; the more we dig in, the more easily we enjoy the offerings. I think we need to listen to poems, as if in their own language. I’ve read this Salt Spring Island legend loves discussing books and I would dearly love to join her! I can’t imagine any poet, politically minded or not, who wouldn’t incorporate nature and Phyllis of course has written of water. In forestland, similarly to her, I too savour solitude and liberating terrain.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Vision Tree contains a selection of poems from eight of Phyllis Webb's previous collections, including: Trio, Even your right eye , The Sea Is Also a Garden, Naked Poems , Selected Poems 1954-1965, Wilson's Bowl , Talking , and Sunday Water: Thirteen Anti Ghazals ...

From Trio...

I.
On the apparent corner of two streets
a strange man shook
a blue cape above my head,
I saw it as the shaking sky
and was forthwith ravished.

II.
A man bent to light a cigarette.
This was in the park
and I was passing through.
With what succinct ease he joins
himself to flame!
I passed by silent noting
how clear were the colours of pigeons
and how mysterious the animation of children
playing in trees.

III.
When a strange man arrays
a dispassionate quality before
his public, the public may be deceived,
bu a man's strange passion
thrusts deeper and deeper
into its fire of dispassionate
hard red gems.

IV.
And the self is a grave
music will not mold
nor grief destroy;
yet this does not make refusal:
somehow . . . somehow . . .
shapes fall in a torrent of design
and over the violent space
assume a convention;
Or in the white, white, quivering
instability of love
we shake a world to order:
our prismed eyes divide such light
as this world dreams on
and rarely sees.

I thought I saw the pigeons in the trees . . .

- The Colour of the Light, pg. 21-22

From Even your right eye ...

I thought,
and he acted
upon my thought,
read by some wonderful
kind of glass my mind
saw passing that way
gulls floating over boats
floating in the bay,
and by some wonderful
sleight of hand
he ordered the gulls to land
on boats
and the boats to land.

Or, was it through waves
he sent the boats
to fly with gulls
so that out of care
they all could play
in a wonderful
gull-boat-water way
up in a land of air?

- The Mind Reader, pg. 38

From The Sea Is Also a Garden...

The degree of nothingness
is important:
to sit emptily
in the sun
receiving fire
that is the way
to mend
an extraordinary world,
sitting perfectly
still
and only
remotely human.

- Sitting, pg. 52

From Naked Poems ...

While you were away

I held you like this
in my mind.

It is a good mind
that can embody
perfection with exactitude.

- from Suite II, pg. 73

From Selected Poems 1954-1965...

at five o'clock today Alex four years old said
I will draw a picture of you!
at first he gave me no ears and I said
you should give me ears
I would like big ears one on each side
and he added them and three buttons down the front
now I'l make your shirt wide he said and he did
and he put pins in all up and down my ribs and I waited
and he said not I'll put a knife in you
it was in my side and I said does it hurt
and No! he said and we laughed and he said
now I'll put a fire on you and he put male
fire on me in the right place then scribbled me
all into flames shouting FIRE FIRE FIRE
FIRE FIRE FIRE and I said
shall we call the fire engines and he said Yes!
this is where they are and the ladders are bending
and we made siren noises as he drew the engines on
over the page then he said the Hose! and he put
the fire out and that's better I said
and he tolled over laughing like crazy
because it was all on paper

- Alex, pg. 109

From Wilson's Bowl ...

Rilke, I speak your name I throw it away
with your angels, your angels, your statues
and virgins, and a horse in a field held
at the hoof by wood. I cannot take so much
tenderness, tenderness, snow falling like lace
over your eyes year after year as the poems
receded, roses, the roses, sinking in snow
in the distant mountains.

Go away with your women to Russia or take them
to France, and take them or don't the poet is
in you, the spirit, they love that.
(I met one in Paris, her death leaning outward,
death in all forms. The letters you'd sent her,
she said, stolen from a taxi.)

Rilke.
Clowns and angels held your compassion.
You could sit in a room saying nothing,
nothing. Your admirers thought you were there,
a presence, a wisdom. But you had to leave
everyone once, once at least. That was your
hardness.

This page is a shadow hall in Duino Castle.
Echoes. The echoes.
I don't know why I'm here.

- Rilke, pg. 120

From Talking ...

- , pg.

From Sunday Water: Thirteen Anti Ghazals ...

Mrs. Olsson at 91 is slim and sprightly.
She still swims in the clamshell bay.

Around the corner, Robin hangs out big sheets
to hide her new added on kitchen from the building inspector.

I fly from the wide-open mouth of the seraphim.
Something or somebody always wants to improve me.

Come down, eagle, from your nifty height.
Let me look you in the eye, Mr. America.

Crash - in the woods at night.
Only a dead tree falling.

- pg. 145

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating collection of poetry by one of Canada's finest modernist poets.

[Vasha7 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure what I think of this. There's certainly some interesting poetry in here. A lot of it is terribly obscure, to me, but a big plus is that Webb pays attention to rhythm and sound more than a lot of free verse does nowadays. She writes a lot about other poets, writers, artists (an academic trait?) References to astronomy and biology suggest an interest in the sciences -- I like that. "The Time of Man" cites Natural Selection, but in order to say what, I really have no idea. Some things in the book seem clicheed to me, but there's enough to keep me reading.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 W367v 1982