Caroms

Although only a few copies of Stephen Sandy's Caroms are on public sale, and although the work will doubtless be totally ignored by most summer people, it would not be fitting if a publication of such interest to certain Cambridge readers were to pass entirely without mention.

Mr. Sandy is a graduate student in English whose poems used to appear with some frequency in Cambridge literary publications, but who has remained, for one reason or another, out of local print for over a year. It is rather a pity that Caroms did not appear during the regular season, so that those who are interested in such things could observe just what the aforementioned literary publications have been missing.

Caroms consists of eight shortish poems on various topics, displaying various degrees of skill. In all of them, however--and this is refreshing to see--the poet has worked slowly and carefully, has obviously weighed each word for accuracy and appropriateness, has listened for its value and effect. In his most successful poems, Mr. Sandy is a quiet and reflective poet, filtering his impressions through an attitude of thin irony; in his less effective poems he is a pyro-technician mixing together dissimilar images, and coming up with something considerably less impressive and less compelling than his more lucid work.

Sandy's skill lies in his ability to sustain a thought in accurate and effective language through a number of well chosen images and pleasing conceits. His language is quite subtle, leaving itself susceptible to various interpretations, permitting the inclusion of various ideas. This flexibility can most obviously be demonstrated in a poem called He Wins! This piece is on a common theme; it begins on a deceptively insipid note:

How earnestly he wins Success' own Sweet cadillac.... moves on to describe the poem's unnamed character returning home, and begins to discuss his garden and his contentment with his mode of living. As one reads along, however, one realizes that not only is the poet describing in almost bitter terms the character's satisfaction with his garden, but is also parodying Marvell's The Garden, a rather brilliant piece of allegorical poetry in which Marvell makes his garden the image for intense Platonic contemplation. As one thinks of The Garden, the extent of Sandy's bitterness, the effect of his sarcasm, becomes clear:

...And knows a garden in a backyard lea where sun has warmed green blood where flowers grow where fruits are ranged by lusters [sic] on each tree, where silence flows: where it is green to go.

To my mind, the last six poems in the issue are written with ability approaching that demonstrated in He Wins! The first two, however, are of a different type and are on the whole less effective. In these, Sandy pushes together series of discordant images--intending to create a particular picture which for one reason or another does not emerge. In a poem called Fledgling, Sandy uses this technique:

Bird, Bristling softly for the shape that comes quilling for wind (your war, whatever calms) With your squalling, tantrum toward song! Flight shall yet stick to that penguin wing... Sandy's attempt to create great concentration seems in this case to fall somewhat short of cohesion.

Yet, as mentioned before, the great bulk of these poems are of high quality, quality far above most of that which appears in the pages of Cambridge literary journals. The poems are remarkably mature, the style remarkably economical, though not spare. It certainly is a pleasure to welcome Stephen Sandy's work back into circulation.