'Find the Word for It, Wordsman'

By Dream Palace (1986), the title of his second collection of poems from a major publisher, Herbert Morris (1928-2001) means memory, his obsessive theme. The writer he most often recalls is not a poet but Henry James, the later, discursive James whose prose gives the impression of endlessly refining itself, rearticulating with greater precision what has already been articulated. In this, James replicates the workings of consciousness itself, as does Morris. Here is James in Chap. 2, “New York Revisited,” in The American Scene (1907), written on the return to his native land after a twenty-year absence:  

“My recovery of impressions, after a short interval, yet with their flush a little faded, may have been judged to involve itself with excursions of memory--memory directed to the antecedent time--reckless almost to extravagance. But I recall them to-day, none the less, for that value in them which ministered, at happy moments, to an artful evasion of the actual.”

And this is from the first poem in Dream Palace, “My Parents on Their Honeymoon: A Snapshot,” twenty-five, four-line stanzas of blank verse:

“My father, lying face up, takes the sun,

my mother, nowhere visible, of course,

since it is she who handles the box camera,

who, for the future (this is how we looked,

this, by implication, is who we were;

will it be far from 1921

to those others, years later, we become?),

must want this picture of him for herself,

“random, off-guard, unposed, relaxed, eyes closed,

My Young Husband in His Silk Sailing Shirt

with Narrow Stripes and Long Sleeves, and a Beanie

Signifying We Are About to Sail,

“though she may be unsure those words are apt,

doubtful her caption will do this scene justice,

unversed as to what cameras can do,

cannot do, what one should expect them to do . . .”

Herbert’s verse is difficult to excerpt. It’s like trying to dip a specific cup of water from a river. The passage just quoted is drawn from a single sentence that straddles seven stanzas, twenty-eight lines. He’s not an aphorist, not conventionally “quotable.” His diction is plain, never “poetic” and certainly not flowery.

I learned of Morris when Counterpoint published his final collection, What Was Lost, in 2000, the year before his death. On the cover is “Portland Place, London, 1906,” a photograph taken by Alvin Langdon Coburn. The first poem in the collection, “House of Words,” is narrated by Henry James shortly after Coburn had photographed him at Lamb House, in Rye. James included some of Coburn’s prints in the New York Edition of his work (“Portland Place” shows up in James’ masterpiece, The Golden Bowl), and it was the James connection that initially attracted me to Morris. The poet uncannily echoes James’ halting, endlessly qualified syntax as the Master questions the life he has dedicated to words in a nineteen-page dramatic monologue. It concludes:

“. . . a house nonetheless, a destination,

a house rising, imagine, word by word,

from words, one’s words, (find the word for it, wordsman;

say, if you can, what the years were, one’s life.)”

  

James and Morris, both late in life, merge like overlaid transparencies. I have heard from a publisher interested in assembling a collected edition of Morris’ poems. I would like to hear from anyone who knew Morris or knows his work who might help bring such a belated project to fruition. He seems to have shunned attention during his life. I have never seen a photograph of Morris. Perhaps, posthumously, we can give his work the attention it deserves.