A Time To Thunder and other Poems
by Edith Segal, Watercolours by Samuel Kamen
Introduction by Pete Seeger
Philmark Press, New York City
c.1984
Edith Segal, a product of New York's Lower East Side, is perhaps best known for her connection to the theatre arts. The same talented person, however, is also the author of a number of volumes of children's verse and others of adult poetry. Now in her eighties, Edith Segal has produced another collection of poetry.
On the jacket back of this collection a group of the poet's peers, among them other poets and theatre people, are quoted in approving if not outright admiring endorsation of her talents. The introduction by Pete Seeger informs us that "these poems, with their humour and insights, cover a wide range of everyday life, but all point in one direction; a world in which people of varying backgrounds can share, a world without poverty, a world with room for all..."
The first poem in this collection, appropriately titled Foreword, entreats the gentle reader:
"Listen, please listen,
I ask to be heard
I've labored long
selecting each word
with piercing precision
to truly mirror
my deeply disturbing
restless furor ..."
We are thus brought into Edith Segal's world of concerns; concern of a nuclear holocaust, of the inequities which life hands to the vast working class, of lack of understanding between people, of discrimination. And we're also given glimpses of the Edith Segal of dance and song, and of the elderly and concerned artist/philosopher's view of self; of self reflected in the mirror of diminishing years.
A reading of the campaigner-against-nuclear-proliferation Edith Segal tells us in Rainbows: "We challenge the madmen, the rainbow killers/ We refuse to burn, agonizingly die!/ Our rainbow of people will guard this planet/ and reach for the rainbows that arch the sky!"
The personal Edith Segal tells us in the poem Years: "the challenge is to grow and learn/ in spite of growing old,/ to spread one's wings each living day/ as the precious years unfold". Clearly, from this collection and the thoughts arranged therein, this is precisely what the poet has always striven to achieve.
Some of these poems have a resonance and strength, like The Rebirth of Dance Black and White, commemorating a dance production which Edith Segal choreographed, with the poem reading in its final stanza:
"The many labor, as the few exploit...
A long and painful truth,
the crushing of humanity's hope,
the demeaning of its youth."
The poems titled On Reading Barrie Stavis' Lamp at Midnight, and Spanish Morning Song are outstanding in this collection, and the poem of the Spanish Civil War reads thus:
"Awake, my children, danger's near
'Tis not the humming birds we hear
'Tis fascist blackbirds come to kill
Death is not still.
Awake, my children, soon they come,
their shadows hide the morning sun.
Awake before it is too late.
Death does not wait.
Awake, my children, hear their cry.
Your playmates fear that you may die.
They call for you to wake and live.
Death does not give.
Awake, my children, see the sun,
it shines again, for we have won!
The blackbirds came a-tumbling down.
Death wears a frown!"
The watercolours that grace this publication are elegant and lovely, a wonderful counterpart in spirit to the elegiac poetry. And it is perhaps fitting that this is a husband and wife effort; the artist is Edith Segal's husband.
While there are definitely some very bright moments in the poems representing this collection, their quality and poetic tone is, unfortunately, not sustained throughout. Many of the poems included here are banal and uninspired; they lack lilt, express and verve.
However, the collection is an attractive one, the poems quoted at length here lifting the quality overall to a production well worth reading.
c. 1985 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Canadian Jewish Outlook, Vol.23, No.3
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