Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems by Lynette Roberts Read Free Book Online Page B

Charles Olson
     of
Maximus
. In her modernism of the local she perhaps recalls (again in a limited but precise
     way) the William Carlos Williams of
Paterson
. In other respects – its tendency towards emphatic alliteration and assonance, its
     rhapsodic descriptions, vatic registers and grand abstractions – her poetry belongs to the 1940s, alongside the work of the
     ‘Apocalypse’ and New Romantic poets. As well as the poets ofthis period, Roberts shares something with the artists, specifically with painters
     such as Ceri Richards and Graham Sutherland, who worked on the peripheries of the
     literary scene of the time. Most strikingly perhaps, her poetic aerial views are also
     reminiscent of Eric Ravilious, war artist with the RAF, whose dramatic coastlines
     and images of planes and submarines make interesting comparison with Roberts’s. Her
     work is also part of the twentieth-century flowering of Welsh poetry in English, the
     tradition of Dylan Thomas, Glyn Jones, Vernon Watkins, R.S. Thomas. Like these poets,
     Roberts has learned from the Welsh-language tradition, not just in verse technique
     but in literary heritage and cultural politics. Add to all this the work of Auden
     and MacNeice, and we have a poetry bristling with contexts, alive to its time and
     place even as it dazzlingly dramatises and reimagines them – a poetry open to influence
     and example while perfecting its own distinct voice and vision.
Acknowledgements
    My greatest debt of thanks goes to Lynette’s daughter, Angharad Rhys, a generous source
     of help and humour who made the work both fascinating and enjoyable. I am grateful
     too to her brother, Prydein. This book, and my part in it, is for them.
    No one who has worked on Lynette Roberts can fail to be grateful to her critics and
     advocates. Most notably Tony Conran, Nate Dorward, Keith Tuma, John Pikoulis, Nigel
     Wheale and John Wilkinson have all in different ways made compelling cases for her
     stature and interest, and kept the memory of her remarkable poetry alive.
    It was Francesca Rhydderch of
New Welsh Review
who first gave me, a newcomer to Wales and to Lynette Roberts, the space to follow
     up on my enthusiasm. It’s a happy debt to record. The
London Review of Books
printed several of Roberts’s previously unpublished poems, and
New Welsh
Review
first published her talk on her South American poems. It’s good to be able to thank
     Judith Willson once again for seeing the book through and contributing so much to
     its conception and presentation. Chris Miller, Charles Mundye, Angharad Price and
     M. Wynn Thomas gave invaluable advice on matters of interpretation, contextualisation
     and translation, and Ozi and Hilary Osmond were inspiring guides to the landscapes
     of Lynette’s poems:
diolch o galon i chi
.

    Patrick McGuinness
2005

    Obvious errors of spelling and typography have been corrected, spelling and presentation
     have been made consistent, and some older conventions have been modernised.
Poems
and
Gods with Stainless Ears
are presented here as they originally appeared, with Roberts’s own notes at the back
     of each volume. The editor’s notes are in the conventional place at the back of the
     book.
    The Lynette Roberts papers are held at the Humanities Research Center at the University
     of Texas at Austin.
Notes
    1 Though Roberts is little-known, the critical work on her has by and large been insightful.
Poetry Wales
devoted an invaluable special issue (1983, 19/2) to her, containing essays by Anthony
     Conran and John Pikoulis, extracts from her autobiography and her correspondence with Roberts Graves. For essays and articles on Roberts, see
     especially: Tony Conran, ‘Lynette Roberts: War Poet’, in
The Cost of Strangeness: Essays on the English Poets of Wales
(Llandysul: Gomer, 1983); ‘Lynette Roberts: The Lyric Pieces’ (
Poetry Wales
, 1983, 19/2); and ‘Lynette Roberts’,
Frontiers in Anglo-Welsh Poetry
(Cardiff: University of Wales