Light of Burning Towers

Bob Lincoln is Head of the Acquisitions Department at the University of
Manitoba Libraries.

It is 20 years since Geddes began to publish poetry, and in that time he
has written 10 volumes of verse, short stories, a play, and a collection
of letters, as well as editing numerous anthologies. Light of Burning
Towers includes many of his best-known poems. The arrangement is not
chronological, nor are the poems identified with the books that they
first appeared in. Light is divided into five sections. The first two
deal with political events in North and South America; the third, with
poets and Chinese politics. The fourth section concerns the terra cotta
figures unearthed in China in 1974, and the fifth is a more personal
section recounting Geddes’s Canadian experiences. The whole is an
excellent selection of his poetry.

While characterized as a political poet, Geddes is more directly
concerned with establishing order out of chaos and political unrest, and
with positing moral choices. To write with these objectives he has
developed a clear, journalistic style and the voice of a reluctant
observer who rarely intrudes on his subject.

There is here a fascination with death and a minimum of humor, although
there is a tremendous intelligence, and the reader gets glimpses of
seventeenth-century English wit at work. Geddes’s poems have a clear
outline and structure, except when he is retelling an older story (as in
“Spines of Agave”).

The range of subjects in this book—from Larkin, Neruda, and Pound to
Ming Tombs, fishing boats, and nuclear bombs—is wide. The reader is
treated to the light of many symbols, cultures, and events. In these
poems, Geddes seems to be fascinated with life under war conditions on
one hand, and with the deadlines imposed by a quick tour of a foreign
culture on the other. As a result some poems may only “scan the
fleeting sights and signboards / for something to hang a thought or poem
on.” Others have a permanency and life of their own. The question here
is not one of craft and skill, but one of accuracy. Does Geddes find
himself in the same position as does a member of the Terracotta Army,
where the “Artist lies down, at last, with bureaucrat?”

In this collection Geddes is cautious and in control. The subjects
speak their lines, then exit. The sense of time and rhythm has been
altered because the poems are not arranged as they were written, but as
if a scholar had catalogued them. The result is a remarkable but
unsettling book. An index of title and first lines would have helped, as
would better proofing—for example, it’s Andrew Marvell, not Andrew
Marvel.