Notes from a Guitar

It is an irritating habit of reviewers to speak of ‘promise’ instead of defining the actual achievement of a new poet. Yet Mr Fisher’s poems are particularly promising. Certain resonances of feeling emerge clearly, as in ‘The Rain has a Secret’ –

page 431

Sadly
and ever-so-softly
it falls
on the young boys pulling their dinghies ashore
on
the spring-blooded youngsters sky-larking
on the wharf
and on
the old woman who bends grovelling for pipis in the sand
with twisted fingers . . .

A suitable comparison would be with the early poems of Carl Sandburg. The units of emotion pulsate like separate twanging notes of a guitar. When Mr Fisher wrestles with larger themes of age and youth, or the social implications of the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, he loses resonance and tends to harangue us. Yet none of the poems in this pamphlet are insincere or totally lacking in originality. ‘The Ballad of Eliza and Edward Hill’ is certainly the best – a song about and story of a pioneering couple, well-focused, with the quality of a genuine folk-poem. It begs for guitar accompaniment. One dares to hope that Mr Fisher’s gift will grow and not be crushed by his own inner moralist or the brutal automatic pressures of life in the Welfare State.

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