reviewed by Andrew Spragg in Tripwire 22
Tom Raworth occupies a contradictory status in late 20th century poetry: unilaterally admired on both sides of the Atlantic, but criminally overlooked by literary tastemakers; a well-remembered and regarded poet who seemed to swerve the petty squabbles of UK poetry while also producing several funny, spikey satires of its foibles; a writer of playful off-the-cuff experiments who also wrote with great poignancy and insight.
Cancer is a book that was ‘lost’ in 1973 when its original publisher, Frontier Press, ran out of funds. It comprises three sections: the prose poem “Logbook,” the self-explanatory “Journal” (covering the first three months of 1971) and “Letters from Yaddo, correspondence Raworth sent to the poet Ed Dorn while staying at an artist community in Saratoga Springs, New York. Much of it has been published elsewhere. “Logbook” was issued as an illustrated volume in 1976 by Poltroon Press, and anthologised in later selected and collected volumes. The other sections have also appeared, dispersed and lightly revised. The reassembly of Cancer comes courtesy of Raworth’s estate and Miles Champion, whose excellent editorial work can also be seen in Carcanet’s selection of Raworth’s writing, As When. What Cancer gives the reader is a fresh perspective on the chronological sequencing of these texts, written in a span of time that would see Raworth depart the UK, travel to the US and begin a series of critical transitions that would commit him to a life of writing, making art and teaching. It is probably too neat a thing to suggest this was the roll of the dice that set him on that path, but our lives are full of such biographical shorthands.
Despite its breadth of form, there are several throughlines in Cancer. Raworth was a writer of speed and perception, a great advocate for the insight that came with keeping the gates open and the lines clear. He explicitly says in “Journal,” “Intelligence become reflex equals intuition,” and (almost) says in “Logbook,” “Until the day I ( )ed that intelligence and intuition were the same, and passed through that fence.” Raworth’s writing is about the moment, but it is also about the way writing can slow that moment down and render it strange. “Journal” in particular catches various phrases, overheard or said, and holds them up for inspection. In one section of “Logbook” the text twice encourages us to “grow gills. swim down, and get over that molecular distinction of ‘the surface’.” The poem’s multiple collapses in perspective, time and register shows that simultaneously the text can be being written, the radio being heard, the story being told and the “ash…making a soft cushing sound as I type on, pausing only this time to watch my fingers move, have a pain in my stomach, pay close attention to three words in the lyric.”
It is tempting to see “Logbook” as the product of an anticipated journey, a fantasy of the kind of travel that permeated adventure stories and action films, while “Letters” reflects a more sober reality. Raworth could be considered to be amongst the first generation of 20th century working-class writers for whom travel was not entirely driven by twin forces of conflict and commerce. He describes an unsuccessful attempt to go to sea at seventeen and later being rejected from the army on medical grounds. Like many men of his age and background, this was likely the only means by which the world would be open for exploration. It was also a generation who read, and took to heart, the Beat Generation writers. This is a legacy that Raworth acknowledges in “Letters from Yaddo,” saying “Kerouac was the last to try and get all the way round before the bell rang for time.”And the impulse to travel became a critical part of how he lived and wrote.
Cancer presents a writer working out his own form of catechism, weighing up his options and what is important. It is easy, with the benefit of fifty-two years hindsight, to know that what Raworth discovered was the good, true stuff; it was probably less clear in the moment, thousands of miles from his place of birth and family, writing letters to a close friend about his experiences. While Raworth’s journey to America did not arise from the mass migrations of capital or conflict, he was looking for work, and beginning to eke out the precarious existence of a full-time writer. “Letters from Yaddo” opens with him informing Dorn, “I had a card from Anselm waiting for me saying there’s no job in Iowa – which I’d known for at least thirty-three years.” It is little wonder that Raworth’s letters find him restless, lonely and reflective at times. However, they are also rich with reflections, humour, verve, a modish delight in aggro and tender affirmations about his wife, Val (“There’s no tape I can play about her: she just changed the whole machine from mono to stereo.”). “Logbook” provides multiple images of the world overwhelmed by capital and the deadening presence of advertising in language (“…death, clothes, and 200 different kinds of washing powder.”). In one section objects in a room are described by their country of origin, a characteristically swift and keen-eyed comment on globalised commerce. The satire on colonial narrative feels years ahead of other experimental writers of the same era, many of whom were still wallowing in fetishistic appropriation or Orientalism when considering other people and places. Neither “Logbook” nor “Letters from Yaddo” neatly fit into the arc of fantasy and disillusionment; they are too rich and complex, full of shifts in emotional and intellectual weather.
“Journal” is a collection of quotidian fragments, some funny (“Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ as background music to crop spraying on Farming Today”), some random and several that consider the role of art or writing or both. There is little contrived in what Raworth writes; it is companionable even when it is reflective or self-aware: “Not an art that can be understood because people have gone along that path – but a memory to be there if they ever do so they will not be lonely.” This again is indicative of the overriding themes of Cancer: curiosity, friendship and trusting oneself, even when the path is not explicitly mapped out for you. Nothing is didactic in Raworth’s writing. He tries out positions and methods, and is comfortable leaving them behind when they no longer serve a purpose. There are several ideas written out and abandoned. At one point, he appears to steal a march on Kenneth Goldsmith by 30 years, setting out to retype every piece of mail he receives for three months, before reasonably concluding the exercise was “boring.” “Letters from Yaddo” is in essence the same concept with tweaks, as Raworth describes: “Well, dust it off, turn it around, take a photograph of its reflection, buy it a set of retreads and off it goes again.” Twice within Cancer, he grapples with UK poetry and gives a summation:
And I am busily sweeping up the last few words in a country without an ear, whose artists are busily filling in the colours they’ve been allocated in the giant painting- by-numbers picture of themselves, because they think an interview with the man (now a physicist in Moscow) who was the boy on the Odessa Steps makes a connection. Full moon. High tide. Because it’s all gesture, and nobody ever talked in words. (“Logbook”) I live in a country whose poets are afraid of the dark and the wind because they carry burning books outside which are soon blown out. They have forgotten how to carry a coal, which gives more light as the wind blows. Even the best of them withdraw from what they know they should do. The crack is there in front of them, but they’re not sure if they can survive on the other side. (“Letters from Yaddo”)
Raworth’s coal—exemplified by the telegraphic efficacy of phrases like “Full moon, High tide.”—is apparent throughout Cancer. What persists is his conviction, his desire and ability to write, unbound by anything so problematic and puerile as developing an orthodoxy.
As is the case for many poets, Raworth has been a guiding presence of my own writing since my early twenties, someone who proved over the years to be a great correspondent, quiet but wry company, and a remote source of encouragement on the days when it felt time to pack it all in. I miss him terribly. His death in 2017 cut the persistent signal of his writing mid-flow. He had been maintaining his website for years with near-daily updates, book recommendations, mixes, collages and photographs. This assembly of experiences and items of note amounted to some- thing critical in Raworth’s work, something reflected in Cancer. His writing had a way of celebrating the funny, familial and fleeting while also knowing something of life’s innate seriousness and sadness, the fact that there was something behind the projector screen of one’s self to be doggedly pursued, even only to get a partial glimpse. Or as “Letters from Yaddo” articulates so precisely:
…and he knows as he writes that the whole point is that there are no rewards. The pain, the depression, the loneliness are the flesh of the oyster: that’s what poets taste like. And the relief is when a fleck of sand enters and the layers of pearl start building up, taking your attention away from your self.
Andrew Spragg‘s writing has appeared in Chicago Review, Hix Eros, PN Review, Poetry London, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales and the Quietus. He runs RunAmok Press with Jimmy Cummins. Recent books include OoP (Veer2, 2022) and Certain precise instruments compass me round, or getting to it by gradients (RunAmok, 2024).
Cancer is published by Caracanet
Tripwire 