The Turning - Hardcover

Morley, Hilda

4.6 out of 5 stars

10 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1559212020 ISBN 13: 9781559212021

Publisher: Asphodel / Moyer Bell, 1998

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This is a collection of transformation poems. They map the poet's turning toward a healing from grief and brokenness. They explore the rich textures of friendship and render, with clarity and delicacy, both outer and inner landscapes. Morley's poetry has a deep affinity with painting--particularity Klee and Picasso. In the poet's words: "From the Abstract Expressionists I discovered a way of seeing the modern world in its totality, finding meaning in what was defaced, injured, dishevelled, torn, eroded and disfigured, without rejection. To transform or transmute these elements but still to embody them was my task as poet." This poetry is primarily for an adult, feminist reader. Ms. Morley is very accessible and this collection will appeal to men as well as women.

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Review

The poet Hilda Morley died at the age of 81 just as her latest (and now last) book, The Turning, was about to appear. Along with her husband, composer Stefan Wolpe, she was at Black Mountain College in the 1950s, where she got to know the poets who would become her intimates--especially Robert Creeley and Denise Levertov. Like Amy Clampitt, she was well into middle-age before her first major book, To Hold in My Hand: Selected Poems, appeared in 1983.

The Turning contains poems written over the course of 40 years, but most of them are new to this reader. The tone is decidedly elegiac. Almost every poem is a tissue of remembrances, shot through with an abundance of people (mainly poets and artists) and places (mostly European, as well as American). Morley identifies with Rilke's restlessness, never abandoning the myth of the journey, and is never without hope of adventure, even in the most commonplace, mundane context.

While Morley adheres to the stress on the syllable prescribed by her fellow Black Mountaineer Charles Olson, she always remains a highly accessible poet. Her poems often begin with a stated thing, a physical object--say, a postcard. But then she will move far from her putative subject, using it instead as a frame for a series of interlacing, interloping lyrical digressions. At the same time, Morley is always a preeminent musician. The moment you "hear" one of her poems on the page, you can't help but note the rightness of pitch and tone. Here, for example, are a few lines from "For Carrington":

Just now at Montauk Point, I saw kites shaped like birds
flying over the sand & thought of you, Carrington,
how you once made a "lovely owl-kite" at your house in
Ham Spray:
What can this be?
Cried the rook in the tree
An owl in broad light
or is it a kite?

Hilda Morley envisions a reciprocity with the world. In The Turning, she writes in gratitude for the privilege of having lived, of having been a guest at this banquet. --Mark Rudman

Review

The Absence
After The Moon-walk
Alexandra Danilova At 70
Alphabet
Anemone
The Apple Of It
April 1943
As A Knife
As A Wave Rises
As In The Beginning Of Time
Asters
Augury
Autobiography
Ballachulish
The Barter
Between The Rocks
The Brisons
By Choice
The Cardinal
Claire Moore, Her Drawing
The Cold Warm Glitter Above Me
Cornwall
Desert
Early October, 1995
Egret Of The Gulf War
Even Now, Over 6 Years Later
Fiesta, Ibiza
For B. N.
For Carrington
For Creeley
For Elaine De Kooning
For Franz Kline
For Giacometti
For John Cage's Etudes Australes
For Marina Tsvetaeva
For Melody R.
For Pasolini
For Piet Mondrian
For Robert Duncan 1919-1988
For Stefan 26 Months Later
Hagstgrom's Map Of The World
Hittites
How Could We Have Stayed Up
How You Loved Your Birthday
The Hull, Pollensa
I Can't Write For You, Moon
I Remembered Of You The Kindness
Ibiza I, Iii
Ibiza, Summer 1961
Il Postino
In That Rock-pool
In The Illness
Japanese Lady
John Keats
Journey To Muzot
Justice, Justice
La Grande Sarah
A Lackawanna Coal-mine
Lean Hard
Learn To Breathe Deeply
A Lesson In Floating
The Life Behind The Life Goes On
Looking At That Sky
The Mourning Stones
Mt. Ste-victoire
Notes From Easthampton - March
Out Of The World's Frame
Parents
Pierre Matisse 1903-1989
Portrait Of A Girl (vermeer)
Postscript
A Presence, Wild
Quebradillas - February 18, 1982
The Rim
Rome, 1970
Season
Simone, Simone Weil
A Single Thread
The Snare
Something Else
The Sound Of This Sea
Swung Off The Parkway
That Ballerina Waist
This Almost Last Day
This Could Be Where I Live
This Ledge
This Ugly Concrete Building
To Draw The Blinds
To Know The Fullness
Tongue In Your Head
Truro, January 1964
The Trying Out
The Turning
Visit To Stefan's Grave, August 25, 1992
Was That Serbia
What I Heard
What Made You Stand There
What There - In Wales
Where The Light Is Equal
Which Of The Heaps
Who Was It Opened My Eyes To See?
The Wild Geese
With Cavafy
The World Then
Your Color
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder�