A very brief analysis of Jorie Grahams Scirocco ( thanks for inspiring me to write this Sarala Ram Kamal I am familiar with Jorie Grahams work and what I really want to say is she has taken on a challenge in this poem which she has been able to negotiate very well. What I mean by this is to write about Keats is also to invite comparison with him and this is treacherous ground as people always prefer classics to new writing. There is another comparison which is that of age difference and gender as well as the one of time and place, she coming from another country and clime and century. In all these things the truth is she manages admirably well. She does this by staying entirely away from trying to write like Keats, her style being drawn from writers like W.C.Williams and e.e.cummings, modernist and precise in moving beyond external form to the pith and essence of poetry which is image, music, figurative language and meaning. As an elegy that comes too late written to the master of odes I cannot but admire her perspicacity but most of all it is her depth of mind and grasp of imagery that startles, that makes her such a significant poet. Two images in particular stand out here for me - the old woman, the memorials custodian, sitting on the porch beneath the arbor sorting chick-peas from pebbles into her cast-iron pot. See what her hands know--- they are its breath, its mother tongue, dividing, discarding. and grapes, which are nothing, which break in your hands The poem is hot, humid and sweaty with the scirocco, the unseen but keenly felt presence of young, sad death, and worthy of being a tribute to Keats in every sense of the word...
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 08:26:58 +0000
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