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5 SPEED
By: Klyd Watkins
24 Poems / 49 Pages / $6
Published by The Temple Inc.
Distributed by The Temple Bookstore
P.O. Box 1773
Walla Walla, WA 99362
Review By: Charles P. Ries
Well regarded small press editor, publisher and poet, Charles Potts
doesn't
publish just anyone. So, why did he publish a guy named Klyd Watkins
from
Nashville, Tennessee? He told me, "I published Klyd Watkins' 5
Speed because
it is poetry that deserves a wider audience and more attention than his
work
has hitherto received. It has some things in common with the work of
other
poets I've published. For instance the absence of formal requirements
other
than musicality and pertinence allows the poet to focus on the substance
and
a style will innately be established. I promote poetry that has
intellectual
rigor, emotional resonance, and high artistic intent." Over half
the poems
in this collection are either about or mention Watkins favorite place
for
poetic reflection, Radnor Lake, Tennessee. About this Potts notes,
"More
particularly I have learned the value of re-considering the same
location,
scene, or set of circumstances, under different or slightly altered
conditions, from Klyd Watkins. Different time of day, different season
of
the year, different frame of mind, yield mutually supporting but
distinguishable results, completing the view or poet's vision."
Here are two examples of Watkins reflections at Radnor Lake. This a
concluding excerpt from his poem, "Radnor Lake, Second Observation
Deck
January 9 2000": "I think I am thinking this to justify / a
description of
the maple on the water / because reflection rules / here again today
like it
did / the time the waves flipped my image and showed me / to the clouds.
/
Again my horizontal maple's / gone aggressive - leafless / this time -
bobbing on the water. Its folded / wave whipped shape bounces hard
as if /
the waves are trying to throw form off the water / into flight / like
some
kind giant last cousin / to a water spider thrashing to spring free / of
maple mambo on the water and rise / into dissipation's multiplication of
light"
And this poem entitled, "Radnor Lake, Otter Creek Road February 6
2000":
"They fly so low - the buffle head ducks -
their shadows race them across the waves
the
speed inverts my eyes
and it seems those shadows
cast the whispering wings up off the water
into shallow air instead of the other
way round"
I asked Watkins to tell me about his writing process, in particular his
reason for spreading copy. He told me, "I like to be free to try
any notion
that enters my mind. In doing that, I destroy the previous draft, and
since
a lot of my impulses toward change turn out to be wrong, I need to be
able
to backtrack. Since word processing files take so little space,
virtually
none, I save, or "save as," all the drafts. I'm one of those
poets that
fights with punctuation. If I'm going for momentum, and often I am, a
comma
(in verse, not in prose) seems a conflict of interest, but you can't get
rid
of all of them. Despite all my revision, I agree that, when the muse is
generous, the first thought is the best thought. I definitely write long
segments that I know better than to change." About his spreading
copy he
says, "Pace is important to me. And when I get to rolling I tend to
use
complex syntax. I find that with complex syntax I can use very simple
diction that works, and plays, really hard. I use lines, partial lines,
the
sweep of the eye, multiple margins, to control pace, and use pace (or
attempt to) to help the reader thru the complex syntax. If the reader is
hearing the words inside her mind at the right speed, the sentences may
be
involved but they are not hard to understand, I hope." This
technique is
used well in his exceptional eight page poem entitled, "December
31, 1999".
Here is an excerpt from that poem:
"Oh indeed there shall be
dramatic
discoveries Sure not because
it's the millennium because awe
at
nature yielding her secret's
part
of what's
always there but
should scientists
find
soon
perhaps among
the winking of coincidence
herself
which
I
hear
fascinates some of the now but
somehow
the
acrobatic mimes in scientists minds
will detect
something new let's say
a force or effect
counter to entropy which
indicates
the universe may be not winding down after all that maybe
the
big bang was a big sneeze clearing a breath way"
There is a wise, whimsical center to these well crafted poems. It is
apparent that Watkins not only has a natural grace for words, but is
also
well schooled in their use. He told me he received a BA and MA from
Vanderbilt in English in the late '60's. I wondered whether he felt his
schooling helped or hindered his progress as a writer. "I don't
know for
sure. I suppose if I had been completely independent I should have
dropped
out of college to read and write full time on my own, supporting myself
with
simple, part time work. I had two sons by the time I was twenty-two and
prepared myself to support them. I not only studied, I taught. A decade
at a
community college in Kentucky. The classroom can be a wonderful place to
read poetry. When you have three, five, a dozen, good readers going over
a
text together-John Dunne or William Carlos Williams or Chaucer-and they
all
get to putting their insights on the table, and the jocks or whoever may
be
there only for credit begin to glean that there is really something
there of
a value so energetic it goes beyond getting a grade, what's wrong with
that?
I had to turn down a fellowship to Iowa Writer's Workshop when I was
twenty-four and had three sons. If I had been able to go to Iowa, would
I
now be even better or even worse?"
These poems exude kindness and compassion - wisdom. I noted that many of
his
poems are reflections, meditations on life - the moments before our
gaze. I
suggested that he sounded a bit like a southern philosopher, and he told
me,
"I am not particularly well read in philosophy (or anything else,
except
perhaps poetry). It is kind of you to pose that as a neutral
statement,
even a bit of a compliment possibly. When my friend Hugh Fox states a
similar opinion it sounds like an accusation; he says I "turn into
a
combination of Richard Morris, Kant and St. Thomas Aquinas," and
most of my
poet friends hold the aesthetic position that it is incorrect for a poet
to
be philosophical, a position that is itself either philosophical or
unconscious. Since I became aware, as a teenager I guess, that we have
the
freedom and the duty to craft our own lifestyle, not take it ready made
from
anyone, I have wanted to be both free and responsible. Perhaps the
tension
between freedom and responsibility forced me to become somewhat
systematically thoughtful."
This depth of thought and rigor of thought is evident in each poem in 5
Speed. Here is a wonderful example of his ability to take a common
moment
and raise it to philosophical reflections. It is entitled, "June
day at the
Y": "All the tanning young mommies // and that's not even the
same /
lifeguard / lord there are too many goddesses // and I myself tho I am
most
surely / a mortal man // that is not all I am, that is not even / what I
am.
My eyes squint / to climb / sun splashes over the red bathing suit / and
phenomenal legs and arms of the lifeguard / knowing in my head there is
/
something higher something / we climb /inward into
something whose /
unending beauty / we / in our doomed flesh reflect."
I want to thank Charles Potts and editors like him who bring us voices
like
Klyd Watkins. He's a wonderful writer and southern gentleman whose
poetry
is precise, lyrical and luminous.
_______________________
Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems,
short
stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over one hundred
print and electronic publications. He has received three Pushcart Prize
nominations for his writing and most recently he read his poetry on
National
Public Radio's Theme and Variations, a program that is broadcast over
seventy NPR affiliates. He is the author of THE FATHERS WE FIND, a
novel
based on memory. Ries is also the author of five books of poetry - the
most
recent entitled, The Last Time which was just released by The Moon Press
in
Tucson, Arizona. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot
and he is on the board of the
Woodland Pattern
Bookstore in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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