This review of Sing Me the Creation is written by Jay Ramsay and appears in Caduceus.
Paul Matthews’ (I quote) ‘source book for poets and teachers, and for all who wish to develop the life of the imagination’ is a classic which I’ve lived with since it first came out in 1994. Paul’s teaching career at Emerson College, Forest Row was the original impetus for its composition with many tried and tested exercises. Uniquely—as Robert Sardello also endorses in this new edition—Paul has the ability to combine linguistic awareness through wordplay and experimentation with soul and meaning, two things that are often divided in the world of teaching poetry: the craft-based approach of the Arvon Foundation on the one hand, for example, and my own psychospiritual approach (in The Poet in You) on the other. Paul manages to go beyond both in the particular synthesis he creates, which is also informed by his practice as a poet in his various collections (The Fabulous Names of Things, Slippery Characters etc.) and his aliveness to the soul of meaning typified in language that is ‘new creation’.
At one point he quotes Emerson: ‘It is not only words that are emblematic, it is things which are emblematic. Every natural fact is the symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture … the whole of nature is a metaphor for the human mind’ (p.55, 1st edition). You could take that paragraph into meditation with all its profound resonance: there is a whole philosophy in it, echoed in Rilke’s advice to the young poet Franz Kappus (c. 1903) about ‘living the questions’ rather than always trying to find answers … a key to being in the mystery that is also what it means to live with poetry and poetic consciousness. I urge you to get hold of this marvellous book: well done Hawthorn Press for staying loyal to it.
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