Customer Reviews

Poems Of J.V. Cunningham

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I discovered J.V. Cunningham quite by accident. I cannot thank the powers that be enough for this 'accident.' Cunningham is the most forward, bold poet of his time. A true classic, no library should be without his work.

I was pleased to find the work of J.V. Cunningham. Over thirty-five
years ago I was introduced to his work by a professor who had been
a pupil of Yvor Winters. Winters had a very traditional view of poetry.
He hated William Carlos Williams verse for example. But he praised
Cunningham for poetry as good as anything Ben Jonson wrote. Guy
Davenport summed it up nicely when he described Cunningham's poems
for being "as finely made as a Swiss watch." Enjoy!

"Maples in the slant sun/The gay color of decay./Was it unforgiveable,/My darling, that you loved me?" The sequence "To What Strangers, What Welcome" by J.V. Cunningham is one of the finest sets of love poems in all of English literature. Spare, mature, formally remarkable, indescribably sad. This book is worth having for those 14 poems alone.

I too stumbled upon this collection by accident. A fan of the typical, high-school-recommended-poets, this collection struck me with inspiration. The poems have great meaning with their simplicity and powerfulness. It's one to buy copies for friends and families because once you start reading, you'll want to share.

J.V. Cunningham is an interesting poet, but not, to me, a loveable one. Does a poet have to be loveable? No, decidedly not. Certainly not in the sense of cuddly or adorable. What I guess I mean is "simpatico". Cunningham does everything he can to be anti-simpatico. From his earliest poems, he expresses a profound distrust of the "will", which I take to be disorderly impulse, unruly desire. What does he prefer? "... I praise / Far lamps at night, / Cold landmarks for reflection's gaze. / Distant they still remain, / Oh, unassailed, apart!" Apollo, in other words. Dionysius is just too too. As a result, his poems are often dense, extremely compacted, frequently, at least early in his career, obscure. Slowly, over time, he developed his specialty - the epigram, the ultimate in classical clarity and concision. But these are not the witticisms of Oscar Wilde or Walter Savage Landor (what names for the masters of the merciless bon mot, Wilde & Savage!). Here are three samples from Cunningham:

"The ladies in my life, serially sexed,
Unscrew one lover and screw in the next." [The title is "The Lights of Love."]

"Death in this music dwells, I cease to be
In this attentive, taut passivity."

"All hastens to its end. If life and love
Seem slow it is their ends we're ignorant of."

There are many interesting (that word again!) things in this collection. Some of these are: (1) Watching Cunningham evolve throughout the course of his first volume "The Helmsman." (2) The highly simpatico introduction and notes by poet Timothy Steele. (3) Translations of several authors, mostly ancient, whose spirit Cunningham certainly shares. Here's one example, from Martial:

"Sabinus, I don't like you. You know why?
Sabinus, I don't like you. That is why."