New and Selected Poems by John Rety (1930-2010) Stonewood Press (Oundle 2012). Pbk. 122 pages. £10.95.
John Rety didn’t write for an audience. He said what he meant, didn’t look over his shoulder. The poems are therefore Rety’s special brand of truth. His characteristic voice is not constrained by strict poetic form; what he says is more important. He was a poet of distinction, both public and private. His poems swerve between the philosophical and campaigning; they can be ambiguous, absurd, serious, funny, wandering, but also loving and sensitive. It’s John Rety distilled into 122 pages. I can’t say he invites you in.
He grabs you by the arm and takes you with him as he kicks his way through life. Half-way through the first reading I had to put the book down; I needed to stop and think.
Notebook in Hand shows that Martin Parker of the newly established Stonewood Press has a love for the craft of publishing. The typesetting and the colour co-ordination of the cover with his own illustration of an open-faced, relaxed John Rety, is an aesthetic delight.
The collection comprises ninety poems of the late Rety, who in the early 1980s set up, with his partner Susan Johns, the Hearing Eye poetry press in Kentish Town, London. The book opens with a Preface from Parker explaining how he was attracted to the project and came to select the poems with Susan Johns. There is then an eloquent and informative Foreword by the poet and translator Stephen Watts, who provides a context for the poems, letting the reader into the man and poet. To end, there’s an Afterword from Emily Johns, Rety’s daughter. It’s a straightforward, but affecting personal history of her father, a perfectly judged piece, which adds a final dimension to Rety and his poetry.
The quirky frontispiece and endpieces feature a series of sketches of the same plain chair, set out in different positions. A reader might reasonably ask, what does this signify, if anything? The answer relates to the poem The Kitchen Chair, which is typically playful. It’s Rety going off in all directions about kitchen chairs: ‘If you want my privatised opinion/ I am sick and tired of his kitchen chairs/ kitchen chairs this, kitchen chairs that,/Are there no other chairs in the world?’ and to the last line, ‘Clear off and get out of the kitchen.’ Rety leaves the reader to laugh and trying to work out what exactly has been said. In this case, the poem is maybe a metaphor for writing poetry. I’ve heard Rety read the poem; it was very funny. He thought so as well.
The opening poem Six Grand Rooms is an evocation of Rety’s boyhood memory of growing up in Hungary, ‘... I could read! Or if pushed to, write in many smattering tongues/ Some alive, many that smelled sweetly of death.’ The Meaning of Life is Rety being asked about that question: ‘After a long silence I say/ There is no meaning.’ In Racing News, another pithy poem, Rety names his horses, Bronchitis, Prostrate and Cardiac. ‘I cannot tell which one will win.’ The Boy is his memories of war, ending with the line: ‘Neither of them would admit that the/ whole town was forever dead.’ Poems showing his tender side are an elegy To Die in Madrid for poet Arthur Jacobs, love poems For Susan (his partner) and Robin, dedicated to Emily.
On the surface, the title poem, Notebook in Hand, appears to be an eccentric narrative about trying to have a conversation with grass, but what is really going on? Is it another poem about being a writer, or an anti-celebrity poem? The reader is intrigued rather than confused.
There are many others, including Freedom, Understand This, There Was a Time, In the Museum, all rich with Rety. I’ll end with one of his best known poems. He read it when his mixture of showman and modesty permitted. It always brought a laugh to the room:
The Poet Offers His Wares I have four liners I have four liners I have four liners I have four liners Also have three liners Also have three liners Also have three liners Plenty of two liners Plenty of two liners Working on one liner now I hope he is.
Peter Phillips’ latest poetry collection is No School Tie . Ward Wood Publishing (London 2011). There are two poems by John Rety on page 13.