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Literary Review
Goodness of nature and God
ROSE MARY WILKINSON'S collection Sing in the Wind with Love contains 105 poems, mostly inspired by spiritual devotion and the admiration of nature and its beauty. Some of the other pieces in the collection are "occasioned-poetry" written in her capacity as President of the World Congress of Poets which meets every year in various parts of the world to propagate its mission of peace and brotherhood through poetry.
The sincerity and clarity with which the poems are written are commendable. The poems appear natural and spontaneous, lend to an inner rhythm and distribute among themselves a lingering church-choir type of inherent musical quality. When Rosemary speaks of suffering, and a closeness with the Lord, the reader shares her truth and her poem has the virtue and truthfulness of an innocent's prayer.
Because her poems are not strained or contrived they are devoid of the madding pursuit of the intellect or craft, which kills many of our modern poets and their poetry. And because the poems here are surfeit with an absence of commitment to any form of craft, the poetry also paradoxically suffers. One needs a golden mean, a fine sense of balance between craft and spontaneous art to lift one's poetry. This balance is nearly achieved in some of the poems as "The Lepers" — "I passed them by in 1986, sitting/ together on ground, up St. Thomas Road, Madras India, and I did nothing/ Their dark, shrouded clothes hurt me/ to the core, hiding their sores, and I did nothing, walking up the steep hill/... Do not emulate me/ I did nothing/' or in "High Clouds", "High clouds/ painting the/ mountains black/ always silent/ giving us only beauty, peace" and as the poems gain in form, impressions of image and spirit of Rosemary's "Christ-poems" haunt us, and remind us of the Grace-poems of Helen Steiner-Rice or the soulful psalm renderings of Christy Lane.
There is a pensive quality which comes around in her successful nature poems as "I Just Came in from the Garden" — "Where do these days go that we long for in winter/ To savor slowly, never to part? / I want to cherish them when the snow falls again". The poetry of Rosemary Wilkinson may not be the in thing though. Her poetry is reminiscent of the soft tones in the poetic works of Frances Cornford or Charlotte Mew. This is not the kind of poetry that mainstream American poetry is looking for in magazines such as Poetry or Nimrod where such simplicity is viewed with a skeptic eye, and where the fan following is for the likes of the turbulent poetry of Adrianne Rich or Sharon Olds. True to Rosemary's credo as stated in her poem "Why Write Poetry" her poems are indeed written to attain a state of "emotional happiness". The poem which tells us that "poetry is written/ to draw out/ the within/ to keep constant interest alive/ with each word written/ to say what no one else says/ for no one else is you/ to uplift others who seek respite/ after the crowding day/ to experience the clean after/ writing a poem/ to rise up mentally in a light/ of emotional happiness," could well be included in school text books or in secondary course texts offering creative writing studies.
There is much poetry that is touching in Sing in the Wind with Love but the apparent simplicity perhaps deprives its readers of the usual challenges. But Rosemary's concerns are immediate and can only be uttered in clear terms, in as much as nature can be praised, the wounded man loved, and God offered his prayer, with honest utterances. Her poetry thus remains true to her commitment to peace and brotherhood through poetry as when she states in the last poem in the book "Who'll Come" — "Who'll come before me/to visit the sick/prisoners, those on death row?/... All those who come to God". The book of poems is remarkable and shows Rosemary' Wilkinson's clear development as a religious poet. It is a fine keep by the bedside to be read over again by people who cherish the values and ideals of poetry, as meant to propagate the simple joys of life, thereby to communicate the goodness of Nature and God to man.
GOPI KRISHNAN KOTTOOR
Sing In The Wind With Love, Rosemary Regina Challoner Wilkinson, Ist Books Library, Price not stated.
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