Apollonian Poems

It's too late even to apologize to Mr. Freeman for not giving notice to his Apollonian Poems until now. The midcult magazines and the little reviews have discussed this collection already, and a fairly prevalent rumor predicts an article in Time. And the time is long past when the CRIMSON should have recognized the work of a man who has spent most of his mature writing years to date in Cambridge, both as student and tutor.

And his long-term residence in Cambridge has left no uncertain traces in his verse. Freeman quotes without citation from Meleager in Greek, handles language with a scholar's weighty vocabulary that at least once ranges beyond the scope of the unabridged dictionary (favrile) but the almost never settles back upon the easy couch of cliche. His most evident fault lies elsewhere--in the directions of slickness and hyperfacility. Too often, the glitter of his words made me stop and lose sight of the whole poem while I luxuriated in a single phrase or image like "scouring chimneys' ledges' edges,/ scuffling sludge of leafmulch thickly." (from Winter Emergent)

But one can't generalize too effectively about this book, for it is too various, too uneven. Freeman apparently gave his publisher poems from an earlier period, poems that are not slick at all, but quite callow. Witness: "Who can train/the weathervane/ or tell the wind/to wax or want?" (from Acrisius)

Freeman in a light and colloquial vein can be terribly amusing. In Come to Izmir he adopts a jaunty sort of irony that mocks the language of travel guides. He has a real gift for conveying the appropriate tone of voice, the proper mood: En Route to Persepolis 330 B.C. displays this talent to good advantage. The poem is in three parts, and Freeman switches roles from section to section; at first he is sage and meditative, then boisterous and lusty.

Such virtuosity is put to even more effective use in Cambridge Seasonal, which I would call his finest work. In this paean to an academic community, Freeman's generous treasure of words does not seem overlush or recondite. He wields the recherche with deftness and then undercuts it with a wonderful transition to the commonplace. Part III ends with Longfellow "Englishing his purgatorio ... while a spirit-lamp warms the coffee up." Part IV shatters this academic fantasy and brings us back to earth:

Coffee and home. En route I pass

a somerville tough with raw brown eyes,

red hands, warts, weatherbeaten levis,

and a real beery leer.

I warmly recommend Apollonian Poems to you. They span the growth of a gifted, highly intelligent poet who may not always strike you as successful, but will almost never fail to arouse your interest and please you with his technical competence.