Sentenced to Life: Poems 2011-2014 by Clive James 2015
James (1939-2019) is one of my favorite essayists and critics. Born in Australia, he lived most of his life in England residing in Cambridge and London. His career began as a television reviewer and critic and evolved to literary criticism and poetry. I’ve read four of his books and especially enjoyed ‘Cultural Cohesion: The Essential Essays’ published in 2013. In that book, James, already in failing health due to years of smoking and drinking and ultimately dying from leukemia, wrote “The childish urge to understand everything doesn’t necessarily fade when the time approaches for you to do the most adult thing of all: vanish.” and “If you don’t know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do.” This little snippet from among all of his abundant works, gives you some sense of his humor, erudition, and just plain damn good writing.
Once it became clear to him that he was dying, James turned his sharp wit, deep feelings, and brilliant mind to reflect upon his approaching death. He appeared on TV for interviews, wrote copious articles, and wrote this book of poems. Ironically, when a new experimental treatment warded off what had seemed like an imminent death, he admitted to being embarrassed about still being alive several years later, a feeling that he turned into a weekly column in The Guardian entitled “Reports of My Death.”
Sadly, I didn’t enjoy this volume of rhyming poetry as much as I had anticipated. There were phrases and stanzas of brilliant insight and the inevitable spot-on metaphors, but overall, it felt a bit self-pitying, overly confessional (he had evidently carried on an 8 year affair which was eventually outed and resulted in alienation from his wife), and a bit maudlin. Nonetheless, this brilliant mind’s exploration of his feelings upon facing the inevitable were worth reading.
Here are a few examples. From ‘Early to Bed’: “To spend the best part of a winter’s day/Filing away at some reluctant rhyme/And go to bed with so much still to say/On how I came to have so little time.” From ‘Star System’: “…Time is a cliff/You come to in the dark. Though you might fall/As easily as on a feather bed/It is a sad farewell. You loved it all./You dream that you might keep it in your head./But memories, where can you take them to?/Take one last look at them. They end with you.”
The poem from this slim volume that is most often quoted first appeared in The New Yorker in 2014. It’s entitled ‘Japanese Maple’:
“Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:
Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?
Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.
My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:
Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colours will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.
