An Island in the Sky: Al Pittman`s Selected Poetry
by Al Pittman ISBN: 1550811991
Post Your Opinion | | A Review of: An Island In The Sky: Selected Poetry of Al Pittman by Patrick WarnerAl Pittman, who died on August 26, 2001, wrote an immediate, and
often emotionally raw poetry. Reading through An Island In The Sky,
I began to think of him as an anti-poet, a poet prepared to sacrifice
the subtleties of form in an effort to create the kind of vocal
unaffectedness that many characterize as "real" or
"true." Though he is compared in the introduction to Dylan
Thomas, and other commentators have compared him to Yeats, there
is little evidence that he possessed Thomas's juggernaut-like
language or Yeats's formal mastery. If comparisons must be made,
Charles Bukowski would be more like it, but without Bukowski's
down-and-out cynicism; or Al Purdy, but without reaching the heights
that Purdy sometimes reached. He also bears some resemblance to
Alden Nowlan, but Pittman is more transformative in his depiction
of reality.
What commentators and supporters probably mean by placing him in
the company of Thomas and Yeats is to identify him with the bardic
tradition that both poets worked in, thus reinforcing the all-important
oral personality of Pittman's poems. While I have no argument with
the claim that Pittman's poetry has its roots in a primarily oral
conception of poetry, I do have some difficulty with another claim
made by Martin Ware, namely that "one of the hallmarks of his
poems is exceptional formal clarity. They are beautifully laid
out." I suppose the following lines from "Lines for My
Grandfather Long Gone" could be used make Ware's case:
On the sea the perpetual waves
roll motionless in their rhythmic run
to the beach. They tilt in poised
suspension above the still suspended swell.
One notices, and appreciates, the superbly turned phrasing of
"roll motionless in their rhythmic run", and "They
tilt in poised / suspension above the still suspended swell."
Alas, for every such passage, there are many flat passages like
this:
It is midnight in winter.
Walking alone, for the sake
of walking alone, I come upon her
crouched in ridiculous posture,
whispering incoherent pleas
to a snowbank
Or this:
There.
Supper's done.
Ready to be served.
Late as usual.
Insubstantial perhaps.
But ritual observed.
The most important thing of it all
gone unneglected again.
Pittman, in other words, wrote the kind of chopped-up prose very
common in Canadian poetry of the last thirty years. Not that prose
in the service of poetry is necessarily a bad thing-Purdy put it
to good use, as did Alden Nowlan, as does Anne Carson at the present
time. But chopped-up prose it is, and the case for it is not helped
by the kind of spurious prosody offered in the introduction: "The
essential unit of composition for Al was the phrase (sometimes
called the measure' by American proponents of open-form poetry)."
It should be said, however, that poems which often lie flat on the
page come to life when read aloud. Try "Charmer", or
"Father of the Bride"-when these poems are heard, their
lines are given an extra resonance. His transparency of method was
likely an effort to be inclusive, especially of those who would not
normally read poetry. And yet, for a poet, Pittman had surprising
difficulty with metaphor. His poem, "The Dandelion Killers"
too lightheartedly tries to yolk those who attempt to eradicate
dandelions from their lawns with the spiritual malaise of those who
hate freedom and spontaneity. "Old Soldiers" is a poem
of some power when read aloud, and yet reading it quietly to myself
I was made uncomfortable by the way it sought to link the life of
the speaker with those of old soldiers in the bar, succeeding only
in trivializing both. His use of simile is sometimes both crude and
cliched, as in these lines from "The Woman in the Waterfront
Bar":
Now you have us mourning like mourners
at the casket you carry concealed
between your thighs.
Frequently the emotional punch he works to deliver degenerates into
mawkishness and sentimentality, as in his lament for the last
Beothuk, "Shanadithit", or in the poem "Angelmaker".
His poems sometimes have forced jocularity, as in "The Cost
of a Good Canoe". Other times they are simply anecdotes as in
"Charmer", or simply statements, as in "Prayer".
And, almost invariably, the first person "I" self-mythologizingly
insists on intruding between the language and its subject.
Having one's roots primarily in the oral tradition is no excuse for
sloppiness on the page or sloppiness in thinking. Other poets manage
to write poems that not only have impact when heard, but reveal
further dimensions when read. Pittman was best when he restrained
his impulse to deliver the knock-out punch and let metaphor and his
sense of mischief do the work for him, as in his early poem "The
Border", and in "Lines For My Grandfather Long Gone".
Too often, however, his poems failed to find this distance.
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