"I try not to perfume the flower"

 Trying to break out of the initial eurocentricity of my initial reading of poetry, I came across a poet, while reading a little bit on Elizabeth Bishop, called Joao Cabral de Melo Neto from Brazil. I had never heard his name before. At all. So I Wiki-pedia'd him. ( That is when you know your website is successful, when it becomes a verb). And I came across this phrase, "I try not to perfume the flower." This was Cabral de Melo Neto saying this about his own poetry. This excited me after going through a Yeatsian syndrome and reading a lot of the Metaphysical Poets. I had come across something of the sort with Larkin as well. In my own poetry, I wanted that particular sound, not just in tone and subject matter, but in the sound of the consonants, the rhyme (when i did rhyme), the assonances to be at rest with themselves, not too forward and calling attention to themselves. Not too theatrical. And not in a breath that was not mine. I remember having that feeling about Auden, but mostly to do with tone. There was sometimes where along what ever stream of thought Auden was taking you on, you would stumble upon certain words that was like hitting your toe. The kind of hurt that doesnt just hurt but cause annoyance. With phrases like 'Cerebrotonic Cato.' But yes, this is what I wanted. I wanted Larkin's blatant imperfection of tone. His nihilism. His honesty. Too many times, we find that aloofness, that unnecessary space between poet and reader. Reading poetry, becomes sometimes like a lecture, where you just listen, and there is no real interaction between the lines and that mind of yours. The poet seems to have, in the process of becoming poet, become beatified. He is the voice of moral, of reason, of righteousness, and there are few intimations of his humanness. He transcends his role as God of the words, arranging them around an idea, to the God of the reader as well. The voice is romantically peremptory. This is where Larkin gets to wear the vestment of my praise. His poetry, admits a humanness. It may be that, being one obsessed and petrified of death, (' The anaesthetic from which none come around) he was acutely aware of his humanity. Even when he became a bit, (in my mind) melodramatic and whining about death, it was a true feeling. And this imperfect, brazenly human voice was not an intimation, but a lovable veracity.

       Cabral de Melo, in his poem "W.H. Auden" approaches death with a mellow / Melo tone. The first line, "  We die the death death decides" is fraught with that matured acceptance of death. Now to make a comparison between him and Larkin would be unfair, as they genuinely seem to have (honest) diametrically opposite feelings toward death. And of course, Larkin is speaking of the fear of his own death whereas Melo Neto is speaking of Auden's. But there is a prevalence of this unperfumed voice of Cabral de Melo Neto.

      Cabral de Melo Neto avoids poetry's constant temptation for melodrama. The mellow tone, and it possesses that Larkinesque rejection of the Patrican/didactic/ Moralist/ prelate roles that other poets have taken up. There is a sort of plainness in his writing that isnt staidness, but a sort of adventure in being oneself. An adventure in welding one's person thoroughly into the silhouette of the persona. A journey into poetic humanness. Banks and Cathedrals is a wonderful poem that captures the typical Cabral de Melo Neto in terms of his Selected Poems : Education by Stone. Speaking of a woman, whom, being driven around, crossed herself mistakenly every time she passed a bank, he continues:

You were only half in error

To cross yourself before banks,

Weren't they built in the first place

To profit from that mistake?

This is street talk. Mundane if I may. Yet it, for me has an inner fire. Probably by venturing into his work, one may be able to agree with me. I do not want to blab too much about him for more than one reason. He is still awaiting further analysis from me, (meaning his poems, since I don't know him personally) and Larkin as well. Also, I am still amateur in writing about poetry, so I don't want to take the risk of writing more than I have in my banks and try stretching an ability that is not yet fully developed. But upon encountering Joao Cabral de Melo Neto's Selected Poems Education by Stone, one found a hard, dry mystery and strange attraction to his poetry. Unperfumed, and withholding an inner fire for when it was truly struck with a worthy hurt.