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Field Guide A Tempo
If sound became visible, what shapes would it take? What images would flash before our eyes? And if those images were set once more to music, could we sing them with all our senses?
Prompted by Thoreau's thought-experiment, Field Guide A Tempo is a topographical map of sounds, a landscape that changes pace, from ballad to dirge to lullaby, tracing the contours of those rhythms that give form and voice to Time itself.
Volume IX of the Hobblebush Granite State Poetry Series.
Prompted by Thoreau's thought-experiment, Field Guide A Tempo is a topographical map of sounds, a landscape that changes pace, from ballad to dirge to lullaby, tracing the contours of those rhythms that give form and voice to Time itself.
Volume IX of the Hobblebush Granite State Poetry Series.
- GenresPoetry
104 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2014
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May 11, 2020
Seeing From The Inside Out
"Field Guide A Tempo" is the first book of poetry by a young, 30-ish poet Henry Walters. Walters has led a varied life, studying Latin and Greek at Harvard,beekeeping in Sicily, and falconry in Ireland. Walters currently teaches and writes in New Hampshire and lives in a way that in many respects is similar to Thoreau. Because Walters makes his home in New Hampshire, his book has been published as volume IX in the Granite State Poetry Series of Hobblebush Books which aims to provide deserved recognition to aspiring New Hampshire poets. Hobblebush Books deserves praise for this series, encouraging poets in its state, as does Walters for his first and ambitious book. Hobblebush Books kindly sent me a copy of this volume to review.
A good deal of poetry aims to help the reader and the writer see language, experience, and him or herself freshly without clichés. Walters pursues this goal with intensity. In a successful poem late in the volume, "From the Inside Out" Walters begins by noting "How the player-piano plays itself" or "how a locomotive wails on its trestle." He says about what he views as clichéd observations:
"Anachronism,, every one!
Things I was told before I'd learnt
to see for myself -- the mill long gone
before it meant what it meant from the inside out."
The poet wants to see things freshly without stereotypes, "from the inside out".
It is worth looking at the organization of this book. It can be divided into three parts. The middle section of this book is a lengthy poem titled "Field Guide" which is divided into italicized prose observations by a speaker on the breadth of the human condition followed by poetic commentary. I found much of "Field Guide" did not help me see "from the inside out" but was muddled and opaque instead. It was difficult and unconvincing as a poem.
The first and third sections of the book consist of groups of three poems -- five groups in the first part and eight groups in the third. Each group begins with a prose-poem which, with one exception, has a musical title and theme. Most of the time the language and pacing of the prose poem capture admirably the nature of the musical term. The two poems in each section following the prose poem generally share a common theme, giving each three poem set a feel of unity. The poems usually are in a traditional format with many of the second poems in each set consisting of sonnets.
The poems cover a wide range of subjects including music, nature, mythology religion, love, and more. Walters' interest in birding and in falconry is prominent. The poems tend to be highly allusive making much use of ancient myth and of Shakespeare. Some of the poems are heavily enjambed with heavy broken lines that make the reader stop many times and go slowly. On occasion, an unfamiliar word will result in a pause and a visit to the dictionary to reflect. Other poems read much more simply.
There is a great deal of lovely, fresh writing in this volume together with much that seemed to me to be clogged and to take itself too seriously. Some of the poems I enjoyed were in the first part of the volume, but on the whole the poems I wanted to read again came in the final part of the book, following the "Field Guide". The writing seemed to become simpler and more immediate and the feelings fresher with less contrivance.
Prose poems such as "Adagio Quasi Immobile", "Scherzo" and "Dance Macabre" involve Saint Francis and his relationship to birds. These poems are moving in their simplicity and in the knowledge of birds which the poet shares with Saint Francis. The little poem "After Rimbaud" effectively complements "Adagio Quasi Immobile". The prose poem "Tempo Mortale" celebrates bluesmen, "Those blind-born, lovelorn, lonesome-sad-& mournful men,/all dead" and does so much more effectively than some of the other musical allusions in the book. The two following poems, "Blues for Papa" and "Milkman" form an excellent trilogy. The prose poem "Ballata con Moto" offers a poignant depiction of loneliness amid further bird imagery, The final triptych, "Coda after Propertius, Greenhouse Labyrinth, and Promissory" are simple unpretentious love poems. Three additional poems in the book, "Rondo Alla Turca", "Presto" and "Animato" received the first annual "Better Prize in Poetry" earlier in 2014. A short video of Walters reciting these poems may be found on the web.
"Field Guide A Tempo" is a promising but mixed first volume of poetry. While some of the book is strained and obscure, many of the poems are fresh, simple and endearing. The better poems in this volume fulfill the poet's aim of seeing "from the inside out." I look forward to further poetry from Henry Walters and from the Granite State Poetry Series.
Robin Friedman
"Field Guide A Tempo" is the first book of poetry by a young, 30-ish poet Henry Walters. Walters has led a varied life, studying Latin and Greek at Harvard,beekeeping in Sicily, and falconry in Ireland. Walters currently teaches and writes in New Hampshire and lives in a way that in many respects is similar to Thoreau. Because Walters makes his home in New Hampshire, his book has been published as volume IX in the Granite State Poetry Series of Hobblebush Books which aims to provide deserved recognition to aspiring New Hampshire poets. Hobblebush Books deserves praise for this series, encouraging poets in its state, as does Walters for his first and ambitious book. Hobblebush Books kindly sent me a copy of this volume to review.
A good deal of poetry aims to help the reader and the writer see language, experience, and him or herself freshly without clichés. Walters pursues this goal with intensity. In a successful poem late in the volume, "From the Inside Out" Walters begins by noting "How the player-piano plays itself" or "how a locomotive wails on its trestle." He says about what he views as clichéd observations:
"Anachronism,, every one!
Things I was told before I'd learnt
to see for myself -- the mill long gone
before it meant what it meant from the inside out."
The poet wants to see things freshly without stereotypes, "from the inside out".
It is worth looking at the organization of this book. It can be divided into three parts. The middle section of this book is a lengthy poem titled "Field Guide" which is divided into italicized prose observations by a speaker on the breadth of the human condition followed by poetic commentary. I found much of "Field Guide" did not help me see "from the inside out" but was muddled and opaque instead. It was difficult and unconvincing as a poem.
The first and third sections of the book consist of groups of three poems -- five groups in the first part and eight groups in the third. Each group begins with a prose-poem which, with one exception, has a musical title and theme. Most of the time the language and pacing of the prose poem capture admirably the nature of the musical term. The two poems in each section following the prose poem generally share a common theme, giving each three poem set a feel of unity. The poems usually are in a traditional format with many of the second poems in each set consisting of sonnets.
The poems cover a wide range of subjects including music, nature, mythology religion, love, and more. Walters' interest in birding and in falconry is prominent. The poems tend to be highly allusive making much use of ancient myth and of Shakespeare. Some of the poems are heavily enjambed with heavy broken lines that make the reader stop many times and go slowly. On occasion, an unfamiliar word will result in a pause and a visit to the dictionary to reflect. Other poems read much more simply.
There is a great deal of lovely, fresh writing in this volume together with much that seemed to me to be clogged and to take itself too seriously. Some of the poems I enjoyed were in the first part of the volume, but on the whole the poems I wanted to read again came in the final part of the book, following the "Field Guide". The writing seemed to become simpler and more immediate and the feelings fresher with less contrivance.
Prose poems such as "Adagio Quasi Immobile", "Scherzo" and "Dance Macabre" involve Saint Francis and his relationship to birds. These poems are moving in their simplicity and in the knowledge of birds which the poet shares with Saint Francis. The little poem "After Rimbaud" effectively complements "Adagio Quasi Immobile". The prose poem "Tempo Mortale" celebrates bluesmen, "Those blind-born, lovelorn, lonesome-sad-& mournful men,/all dead" and does so much more effectively than some of the other musical allusions in the book. The two following poems, "Blues for Papa" and "Milkman" form an excellent trilogy. The prose poem "Ballata con Moto" offers a poignant depiction of loneliness amid further bird imagery, The final triptych, "Coda after Propertius, Greenhouse Labyrinth, and Promissory" are simple unpretentious love poems. Three additional poems in the book, "Rondo Alla Turca", "Presto" and "Animato" received the first annual "Better Prize in Poetry" earlier in 2014. A short video of Walters reciting these poems may be found on the web.
"Field Guide A Tempo" is a promising but mixed first volume of poetry. While some of the book is strained and obscure, many of the poems are fresh, simple and endearing. The better poems in this volume fulfill the poet's aim of seeing "from the inside out." I look forward to further poetry from Henry Walters and from the Granite State Poetry Series.
Robin Friedman
Read
June 10, 2017Last week, I was browsing the wares at my favorite bookstore (Harvard Book Store, in Cambridge, Mass.) when I stumbled on this book, the debut collection of a former college classmate of mine, published by Hobblebush Books (a publishing house whose mission, as per the end-matter, is to publish "New Hampshire poets...whose work has already received recognition but deserves to be more widely known"). Walters's metrically non-rigid approach to the sonnet form immediately intrigued me, as did his sophisticated approach to rhyming, which has a vaguely Welsh feel, what with his predilection for rhyming stressed and unstressed syllables (speak/music, long/trembling) and for creating cynghanedd-esque resonances (heart/inherit, blood/bold). Is this poetry Welsh-inspired? Maybe. Bardic? Definitely: Walters's tone tends toward the lofty and prophetic, even when the subject matter at hand is something you might think mundane such as a subway encounter ("On the Relative Motion of Bodies") or a child's game of capture-the-flag ("Capture the Flag").
Beauty is a word that crops up but rarely in poetry reviews (this is yet more evidence that we live in absurd times, a cynic might say). Some of the poems in Field Guide A Tempo cannot be described by any word other than beautiful -- consider, for example, the sonnet "Greenhouse Labyrinth," whose sestet, rapturously, reads:
"Say the twining heart has what it needs
In way of words. Say it's how it twines.
I walk straight toward you, then turn aside
To another flower. Or say what I mean
Are lips as red as pomegranate seeds
& mute to mine."
Here, beauty comes about not simply from writing about beautiful things, but from making unusual verbal juxtapositions (e.g., "twining heart"), invoking unexpected syntactic forms (e.g., the use of the imperative mood in the first, second, and fourth sentences, with its crescendoing plaintive quality, which is reinforced by the image of thwarted consummation -- "I walk straight toward you, then turn aside" -- in sentence #3), using words that are just slightly different from what the reader might expect (e.g., the use of the word "to" instead of "against" in the final line -- the relative shortness of the preposition "to" allows the alliterative monosyllables mute and mine to come tantalizingly close to one another, like the imagined-or-remembered kissing lips they describe), and taking intuitive-rather-than-logical rhetorical leaps (e.g., "what I mean/Are lips").
Or consider the sonnet "Lookout," which is quoted in full in the final paragraph of this book review I found via Google: http://wordbasket.blogspot.com/2014/1... (And, to you readers who say scornfully and superciliously that what I call beauty in poetry can only be achieved at the cost of willfully ignoring the political, I ask: isn't this poem, in its own way, political? And simultaneously beautiful?)
"After Proteus" is that rarity, a technically perfect villanelle, in that its refrain lines vary upon repetition in nothing except punctuation, yet these small alterations in punctuation change their meanings in significant and astonishing ways.
More excerpts from the book can be found at the following sites:
Better Magazine
Miracle Monocle
Beauty is a word that crops up but rarely in poetry reviews (this is yet more evidence that we live in absurd times, a cynic might say). Some of the poems in Field Guide A Tempo cannot be described by any word other than beautiful -- consider, for example, the sonnet "Greenhouse Labyrinth," whose sestet, rapturously, reads:
"Say the twining heart has what it needs
In way of words. Say it's how it twines.
I walk straight toward you, then turn aside
To another flower. Or say what I mean
Are lips as red as pomegranate seeds
& mute to mine."
Here, beauty comes about not simply from writing about beautiful things, but from making unusual verbal juxtapositions (e.g., "twining heart"), invoking unexpected syntactic forms (e.g., the use of the imperative mood in the first, second, and fourth sentences, with its crescendoing plaintive quality, which is reinforced by the image of thwarted consummation -- "I walk straight toward you, then turn aside" -- in sentence #3), using words that are just slightly different from what the reader might expect (e.g., the use of the word "to" instead of "against" in the final line -- the relative shortness of the preposition "to" allows the alliterative monosyllables mute and mine to come tantalizingly close to one another, like the imagined-or-remembered kissing lips they describe), and taking intuitive-rather-than-logical rhetorical leaps (e.g., "what I mean/Are lips").
Or consider the sonnet "Lookout," which is quoted in full in the final paragraph of this book review I found via Google: http://wordbasket.blogspot.com/2014/1... (And, to you readers who say scornfully and superciliously that what I call beauty in poetry can only be achieved at the cost of willfully ignoring the political, I ask: isn't this poem, in its own way, political? And simultaneously beautiful?)
"After Proteus" is that rarity, a technically perfect villanelle, in that its refrain lines vary upon repetition in nothing except punctuation, yet these small alterations in punctuation change their meanings in significant and astonishing ways.
More excerpts from the book can be found at the following sites:
Better Magazine
Miracle Monocle
Read
February 2, 2015Walters shows some breadth and depth in that he mixes poetry types, forms, and moods quite nicely. St. Francis (on the cover) is a recurring image in some of the poems, nicely juxtaposed with Walters' own experiences with and knowledge of raptors (he is a falconer, among other odd and thus interesting avocations).
Ironically, I found the "Field Guide" poems at the book's heart to be the least enjoyable. Maybe it's me, but I struggled with all of the odd capitalization, the seemingly random punctuation, the wandering thought. Beyond that, Walters' ample use of ampersands, especially ampersands with commas before them, began to distract after awhile.
Despite this, his imagination, his love of sound (alliteration, assonance, repetition of words or homonyms) should attract lovers of word play and poetry alike.
Ironically, I found the "Field Guide" poems at the book's heart to be the least enjoyable. Maybe it's me, but I struggled with all of the odd capitalization, the seemingly random punctuation, the wandering thought. Beyond that, Walters' ample use of ampersands, especially ampersands with commas before them, began to distract after awhile.
Despite this, his imagination, his love of sound (alliteration, assonance, repetition of words or homonyms) should attract lovers of word play and poetry alike.
October 19, 2017
Henry is a friend of mine from my days on the poetry board of the Harvard advocate, and so read what bias you like into my rating. However, from knowing his work as an undergrad I was thrilled that he had come out with a first collection and immediately got a hold of a copy with high hopes. Those hopes were definitely met with such gems as "From the inside out" and "Milkman" which are able to bring the everyday into the realm of the mythopoetic.
"How frost heaves, or sap runs,
How a bloom or berry plumps to a whole,
How meltwater spreads in the old millpond
Come April (though it takes a while)
From the inside out."
An almost incantory exaltation of minutely observed things, while the indentation echoes the turning motion of "inside out". Quietly stunning.
"How frost heaves, or sap runs,
How a bloom or berry plumps to a whole,
How meltwater spreads in the old millpond
Come April (though it takes a while)
From the inside out."
An almost incantory exaltation of minutely observed things, while the indentation echoes the turning motion of "inside out". Quietly stunning.
December 27, 2014
One of the best collections of new poetry that I've read in a long time. Walters' poetry shows an ambitious scope and a sincere love of language. His collection connects the minds of Homer, Shakespeare, St. Francis in a way that is modern. The structure of musical terms combined with an look at the natural world both analytically and spiritually . . .
The poem "Eschatologue" demonstrates this meeting of the spiritual and analytical beginning
"It’s every isle is peopled with Calibans. As many, as earthen as we are, we do speak
Well, we hear stuttering or silence& can get raging drunk on just its music" spoken by a true intellect but one not so intellectual that he forgets to look at the world with wonder.
The tension between the two sides of the mind are also evident in the diction which alternates between prose poetry and metered lines displaying an authoritative voice in both realms.
The poem "Eschatologue" demonstrates this meeting of the spiritual and analytical beginning
"It’s every isle is peopled with Calibans. As many, as earthen as we are, we do speak
Well, we hear stuttering or silence& can get raging drunk on just its music" spoken by a true intellect but one not so intellectual that he forgets to look at the world with wonder.
The tension between the two sides of the mind are also evident in the diction which alternates between prose poetry and metered lines displaying an authoritative voice in both realms.
August 29, 2017
I first read these poems two years ago, a gift from cabin-mate and dearest friend Martha, and felt like re-reading them this week to enjoy again the beauty and reverie. Henry's connection to the flora and fauna of the great outdoors - spurred by his training as beekeeper and falconer - comes through on every page.
Read
July 19, 2015How does one rate poetry? Particularly poetry written by a friend? Of course it is a five, but is that helpful? It is what it is. Musical, rhythmic, imaginative, sometimes obscure, but gently beautiful.
March 15, 2023
The ambition in this book is multilayered and notable. On one hand, Walters pursues a set musical device through language. Poems like "Scherzo" or "Animato" or "Rondo Alla Turca" consider how a poem would sound if it were addressing this particular device, and then what subject would best be addressed with this musical device. I personally don't know a lot about these musical devices, or my recollection of playing music notated with "Animato" is distant. However, Walters approach feels apt and sophisticated. Like what would animated playing look like in language? In this case, the "animation" addresses both the drag that might be present at the start of the music and what happens to the music as its momentum keeps building.
But the ambition is layered by the book's overall structure. There are 12 different musical devices addressed through an individual section. And in each section there are two other poems interacting with the first poem. And it's the three-poem uniformity of these sections that allows for further consideration of Walters's thematic intentions--which I think involve analogizing nature through music. Like how does music help someone understand nature better? How can a specific musical device lend insight to the natural order, and feeling that natural order? To Walters's credit, it's not a reach to see these pieces working together.
Most of all, though, I'm interested in the ambitious "Field Guide" poem that is the book's centerpiece. It's a longer poem that doesn't really reference music, though its position as a section, and its more densely phrased style must be related to music in some way. Perhaps it's a story about humanity and how they've navigated nature. Or it's a "field guide" to living among nature. Whatever its thematic center (and the consistency of its style along with its further use of structure to make eight uniform sections), it definitely makes me think of the tool-ness of language. Like if the story of humanity would involve people's development of tools (something that seems present in "Field Guide"), then language itself must be one of those tools. And so the music of language would be a further commentary.
But the ambition is layered by the book's overall structure. There are 12 different musical devices addressed through an individual section. And in each section there are two other poems interacting with the first poem. And it's the three-poem uniformity of these sections that allows for further consideration of Walters's thematic intentions--which I think involve analogizing nature through music. Like how does music help someone understand nature better? How can a specific musical device lend insight to the natural order, and feeling that natural order? To Walters's credit, it's not a reach to see these pieces working together.
Most of all, though, I'm interested in the ambitious "Field Guide" poem that is the book's centerpiece. It's a longer poem that doesn't really reference music, though its position as a section, and its more densely phrased style must be related to music in some way. Perhaps it's a story about humanity and how they've navigated nature. Or it's a "field guide" to living among nature. Whatever its thematic center (and the consistency of its style along with its further use of structure to make eight uniform sections), it definitely makes me think of the tool-ness of language. Like if the story of humanity would involve people's development of tools (something that seems present in "Field Guide"), then language itself must be one of those tools. And so the music of language would be a further commentary.
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