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Traveling Through Time: Collected Poems by William Marr
953 Poems ~ 452 Pages ~ 1956 – 2025
Price: Free Downloadable Link
https://alharris.com/william-marr/traveling.pdf
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
Now in his eighth decade, William Marr has published over 30 poetry books. A bilinguist, his poetry collections include translations in Chinese, English, bilingual translations in Chinese and English, as well as translations in French, Italian, and one Korean translation. Traveling Through Time: Collected Poems is a gift. It is a gift, not because it is “free,” but because its artistic craftsmanship has stood the test of time.
Poet Philip Larkin in his poem entitled “Days” had this to say about time:
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Indeed, Bill Marr understands “days.” He understands “time.” Traveling Through Time begins in 1956. Awareness of time is a thread woven throughout the work beginning with his 1956 poem “At the Mountainside”:
I met a little boy at a mountainside
who was quick to laugh and cry
tears had hardly rolled down his cheeks
when a sweet smile bloomed at the corner of his mouth
there was nothing purer than his sparkling tears
nothing more beautiful than his angelic face
I understood the intention of the Creator
and was moved by the child’s innocence
I stared at him with a deep feeling
warmth flooded my heart
tears of gratitude welled up in my eyes
when I looked again he was gone
In this epiphany, Marr treats his readers to a visionary ideal in human form. This “purity” of sparkling tears and “angelic” face cannot be captured and held as one’s own. The poet is delighted to have been granted this foretaste of glory, a glimpse he happily shares.
In “Harbor” (1957) Marr combines personification, contrast, and irony to convey the “chilling” feeling, captured by a moment in time, when a beloved child departs to go his own way:
1
the harbor was asleep
when the fog moved in
a strange beast in her nightmare
licked her with its wet tongue
she woke to find the world
weeping
2
watching helplessly the departure
of a roaming son
she wondered why
she had to be a southern port
that never freezes
I remember well the Go-Go dance craze of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Marr uses it here in a subtle commentary on life and on the Vietnam war:
Go-Go Dancing
Shedding shedding shedding
your arms her hair my loneliness
Restless heels are red and swollen
the journey of life is long and without end
Desperate are the besieged souls
sallying forth at every beat of the war drums
and the horns are stretching their long necks
calling you calling you calling you
a string of ominous names
Darling
Why are you shivering?
By way of subjects, William Marr’s poetry knows no limits. His poems are about family, faith, war, love, hate, animals, the natural world, politics, the environment, current events, and more. Humor, satire, irony, personification, alliteration, enjambment, and surprise endings, are just a few of his tools. His poems are cryptic. This is characteristic of Asian poets who think and write in pictures. A word of caution: Marr does not coddle his readers. He expects “us” to “do our part” by reading his poems slowly and thoughtfully. As I prepared to write my review, I was rewarded manyfold by doing this.
“Watching Snow from the Window,” reminds me of Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” Marr, like Stevens, is less concerned about the obvious subject of his poem than about the life-perspectives embedded within it:
1
black men’s
white teeth
no longer showing
good tempers
2
a piece of snow on the branch
suddenly falls
when the bird with a frozen song
flies away
3
as the footprints in the snow
get deeper and deeper
they become harder and harder
to comprehend
4
Falling on the feverish face of
a homesick boy
the snow melts and turns into
a warm tropical shower
5
coldness makes us independent
we carefully hold our breath
as long as the sun won’t show its face
we are certain to have a white Christmas
6
in the wind
the trembling hands of a withered tree
open upward
the dormant seeds in the cracked soil
are ready to sprout
7
A sudden toll
of the steeple bell
shakes down
the snow from the Cross
Marr’s poems quite often contain “layers.” That is, they are open to a range of interpretations and life-applications. For example, “At the Concert” (1970) can be interpreted both literally as well as figuratively: “thick and heavy / music rains down / like a net // choked on surging waves / in its flight / a panicky soul / bursts out / an earth-shattering cough.”
Well known for his animal poems, Marr (from 1981) delighted me with poems about: goats, tigers, bald eagles, a rooster, dogs, ducks, cats, horses, snakes, a dragon, a caged lion and more. “The Goat,” channels the poet’s crusty grandfather:
standing erect on a cliff
was my stern
grandfather
in a dark night
they woke me up from my dream
and took the acrophobic me to him
asking me to touch his whiskers
with my sweaty palm
and to jump over the black
generation gap
In a mere eight lines Marr conveys a deep understanding about war:
War Arithmetic
Both sides claim
numerous enemies have been killed
Both sides declare
we’ve suffered no losses
Nobody understands
the arithmetic of war
Only the fallen
know the number
Throughout this amazing collection Marr demonstrates a profound sensitivity to civilization’s conundrums. “The Great Wall,” among Mainland China’s most distinguishing features, stands out in this regard:
1
The struggle between civilization
and barbarism
must be ferocious
See this Great Wall
it twists and turns
with no end in sight
2
What valor
to climb the ragged ridge
and to look long and hard
through a self-adjusting lens
at the skeleton of the dragon
sprawling miles and miles
in the wasteland
of time
The poetry of Traveling Through Time is a journey which entertains, educates, and inspires the human spirit to new heights of joy.
In his heart, Bill Marr sees the good that is available to all who have the will to look for it. For me, “A Poetry Garden” strikes a timeless theme that weaves like a golden thread from beginning to end:
The poems written on earth
with your shovel
they claim
though beautiful
will wither easily
This
I know
is just their jealousy or superstition
Because on this side of the earth
my heart is responding
to your every steady and forceful pounding
And I believe
the beautiful words and wonderful music
flashing up from the rocks underneath your feet
will light up countless eyes and hearts
in dark nights
*For my Taiwanese poet friend Yang Kui, who retired in his old age to cultivate gardens alone in the deep mountains.
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