"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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conjuring up a bizarre psychological and social landscape” (ibid.). “The Zoo Affair” is
also cited as an example of the bizarre:
Several poems in this collection, then, express acute states of crisis. The greater
the poet’s feelings of alienation the less familiar … his mode of expression is
likely to be … Of course, poetry which attempts to express the bizarre may easily
become merely perverse. Livingstone’s sense of classical form, however, usually
provides a necessary measure of restraint… he nevertheless daringly reveals the
darker, obscurer areas of man’s experience where the instinctual responses are to
horror, passion, isolation and death. (162)
This bizarre element will become more predominant in A Littoral Zone where it is used to
convey an ecological message. (See particularly the later discussions on “The Wall
Beyond Station X”, p 201, and “Descent from the Tower”, p 207.)
Chapman points to the wider significance of The Anvil’s Undertone and suggests
“peculiarly regional anxieties have their echoes and counterparts elsewhere”. He notes
that “Livingstone has attempted to modify his reader’s sensibility by affirming the value
of the imaginative life” (171). A page earlier Chapman talks of the individual expression
in Livingstone’s work and gives an apt interpretation of Livingstone’s craft, but elides the
messages behind the craft:
The brilliant episode, then, is Livingstone’s forte. His imagination creates the
dramatic event, which is set solidly in its background. There is economy and
coherence in his projection of a variety of subject-matter. He does not so much
offer a depth of insight into the full complexity of the human condition as a
superbly individual expression of the outward, demonstrative aspects of feeling.
His poetry reveals a sensibility characterized by a profound discomfort: the curse
of being vulnerably human. (170)
This concentration on Livingstone’s craft (“economy and coherence”, “superbly
individual expression”) and certain emotional absolutes (“the human condition”, “the
curse of being vulnerably human”) is a general tendency throughout Chapman’s book.
This detracts from the ecological core or wider issues which are explored and elucidated
in the poetry.
Literary ecocriticism was in its fledgling stages in the 1980s when Chapman’s
book was published. Throughout this review of his criticism I have thought that his effort
to explain and categorise Livingstone’s difficult poetry would have been aided by an
ecologically informed approach. In short, Chapman’s meticulous criticism is limited or
skewed in certain crucial ways. He concentrates on the poet’s craftsmanship at the