In the author photo for “Time Will Tell,” his newly collected poems, David Middleton greets readers with a pen in his left shirt pocket, which reminded me of his fellow poet, Wendell Berry of Kentucky.
I’ve seen many pictures of Berry in which he, too, totes a pen above his heart, poised to record whatever he sees beyond his desk. For both of these poets, the work of words is a portable enterprise — a calling in which inspiration is more likely to strike in a field or along a roadway than within the cloister of a writer’s study.
Middleton, a poet-in-residence emeritus at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux who’s now in his 70s, also invites comparisons with Berry because they’ve both been hailed as champions of the Southern Agrarian literary tradition. It’s as much a sensibility as a philosophy, evident in poems deeply informed by earth and sky.
One notable example is “The Farmer’s Almanac,” a Middleton poem in which he muses on those old-fashioned farm and garden manuals that bloom from store shelves at this time of year. With their quaint etchings evoking an ancient past, the covers of these almanacs depict a pioneer culture in which land promised not only practical wealth, but emotional and spiritual sustenance, too.
“Time Will Tell” collects Louisiana poet David Middleton’s work from several decades.
Middleton, with typical grace, puts it more succinctly: “Such pictures bear fair witness to a time / When heart and mind could know the world as one.”
But for Middleton, almanacs offer more than mere nostalgia. In their scrupulous attention to the seasons, these humble texts still provide “news of what’s too precious to be news.” In other words, the kind of truth one is unlikely to find on cable TV.
“Time Will Tell” is necessarily a retrospective book; any volume that collects more than 300 pages of poems from several decades cannot help indulging a backward glance. But these many poems, mostly inspired by Louisiana locales, still crackle with the vitality of a green and evolving world yet within our grasp — if only we take the time to look. These poems help us see what endures, even among the ravages of change.
They’re shaped as much by the eye as the ear, and for good reason. Middleton describes himself as “a poet who paints with words,” the result of a childhood in his father’s art studio.
“To me the smell of oil paint is an aroma of the soul, and my love of vivid images in poems comes from that art,” he writes in a brief afterword.
Examples of Middleton’s painterly eye abound. In “Toward North Louisiana,” he recounts a long drive past old farms: “Beside whose lonely houses lately placed / Satellite dishes whiten toward Orion.”
It’s vintage Middleton, the commonplace and the cosmic keeping close company.
Time, we learn in this collection, does tell. These poems affirm that for both Middleton and his readers, the years have been a revelation.
Email Danny Heitman at [email protected].
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