Sexton says his early poems were “very imagistic. Almost all of them were brief and concentrated on one central image.” His poetry gradually evolved into a “slightly more expansive style” following the objectivist school, depicting things in nature in pared down descriptions but not, Sexton says, “as symbols, rather for the sake of the object itself.” In his early days, he was using language more for its literal value than for its figurative connotations, trying to capture the essence of the object; the thing as it exists. Sexton was following in the style set by early objectivist poets like Charles Resnikoff (1894-1976) and Louis Zukofsky (1904-1978) whose early influence was the imagistic style of Ezra Pound (1885-1972). Both Resnikoff and Zukofsky had a direct impact on objectivists Lorine Neidecker (1903-1970) and Wendell Berry (b. 1934), who are acknowledged by Sexton in “Homage to Neidecker” and “Touch-Me-Not”— poems placed side-by-side in Autumn.

The last ten years have taken Sexton’s poetry in a new direction. He now combines objectivism with narration. “When I was in graduate school [1968-1970] all the rage was imagistic poetry, meaning cut down as much as you can. The essence is not narrative. Later I realized that so much was cut that all I had was an image—a little objective poem. I think I have a talent for creating images, but now I’m far more interested in embedding my poems with narrative. This was my attraction to Neidecker. Very early Wendell Berry was like that, too.”

True to his word, most of the poems in Autumn provide an objectively rendered sketch of the subject with a thin narrative thread running throughout the poem. “Then,” Sexton says, “I add my personal voice, usually at the end of the poem.”

Sexton also acknowledges the influence of Li Po (701-762) and Tu Fu (712-770), two Chinese hermits known for their nature poetry. Their poetry was inspired by the solitude they suffered in the harsh rural isolation they sought out to avoid political persecution.

Some twenty years ago, Sexton says:

I picked up one of Kenneth Rexroth’s [1905-1982] little translations of Chinese and Japanese poetry. I was attracted to the idea that to be in the civil service in China, you had to pass an exam in poetry.
In mid-life they often went off and retired to the country. They were scholars, and they loved nature. They lived the life of the mind. I thought, what a wonderful culture that values poetry, values solitude.

Chinese poets often copied the work of other poets in order to perfect the calligraphic characters which in English translations are represented by letters. Sexton explains, “It wasn’t plagiarism, and it was not just copying. It was improving your art by using ancient models. When I’m writing a Chinese poem, I’m sort of writing to honor that tra- dition. I have never consciously taken a line from someone. But they did. They didn’t see anything wrong with that.” The crane is one of Sexton’s favorite birds. In China it symbolizes long life. Human spirits are depicted as ascending to heaven on a crane. Sexton says, “The reason I used the crane as an image in “The Wildlife Sanctuary at Creamer’s Field” is because Eurasian cranes migrate through Ireland. They do come here occasionally. I’m fascinated by certain birds.”

Moreover, Asia is always on Sexton’s mind. He says, “ You are looking toward Japan and China when you look down the inlet. You literally are. That’s probably where a lot of my attraction comes from, proximity and shared mountainous terrain.”

Sexton also experiments with various forms of Oriental verse:

The ancient Chinese poets have a form called the shih. I don’t follow it closely, but it was often a seven-syllable line. There are other poems in this book that are in Japanese syllabic form, a tanka with five lines and a certain number of syllables for each line: 5/7/5/7/7.

So I play around with syllabic verse. “Stages of the Heart” is a tanka followed by a haiku.

[more]