Writing About Tom Raworth In 1972

These poems by Tom Raworth aren’t about

anything I can grasp.  I wrote that

in second aeon’s voluminous reviews  

declaring most of the verses to be short and

very very cryptic        I hadn’t learned not

to double adj back then     I go on to say that the poet  

has deployed all the elements in a sort of soup

leaving no holds to hang onto.

We should go back,  I say,  not on

in our search amid the trackless

shimmering.      The others though,

the academics and the lit critics,

insisted it was there    what we sought. 

Like op art.     Flickering.      It’s just.

that I couldn’t see it.     Not then.

Peter Finch

Tom Raworth reads from Lion, Lion, at San Francisco State, 1976 —The Poetry Center