The second volume of William Wantling's works arrived, from Michael Curran's Tangerine Press. The Fix is luxuriously hardbound like its predecessor, Only In the Sun.
It's a surprise to see that Wantling can create such an amusing trifle as 'The Flying Saucer'--makes you think of him in a new way.
'Letter to Ruthie--1' shows that his wife was the inspiration behind 'For a Nordic Child'
And what's this? A poem to Dylan Thomas? An unlikely influence, probably, but like Catullus of old (another foul-mouthed yet ultra-delicate wordsmith), Wantling was quite an erudite student of poetry. Very knowledgeable when it came to the small press, says Len Fulton in his glittering introductory essay, 'The Four Horsemen of Wantling's Apocalypse', wherein he catches at the hectic, doomed quality of the man and his work. (The four riders, according to Len Fulton, were: War, Dope, Prison and Government.)
While those horsemen were riding down this powerful mind which demanded its liberty at whatever cost, the poetry was a cart with a couple of fiery steeds well harnessed and (just) under control.
'Jackson Pollock' plays upon lines from e.e. cummings ('all in green went my love riding' from the book tulips). The cummings influence on Wantling was great, I think, especially early on. He is, like e.e.c., occasionally puntuationless and generally sparing with the stuff, and has his own way of giving a page, whether slim or chunky, a rich look as cummings did (cummings the sensuous word-fondler and the initiator of lower case verse in English).
These two hardcover Wantlings on the bookcase together, one red and one brown, will not tarnish and turn yellow like Penguins. They contain almost all of Wantling and it wasn't a college in the States that produced them but a private individual here in Tooting, England. We Limeys can take a legitimate pride in that.