Jimp

Suddenly, eventually, the penny drops when reading a poet and one poem can help illuminate the rest of their work and, literally in this case, see it with the benefit of a better light.

The recently deceased Peter Scupham had for a long time been wrongly diagnosed by me as 'a bit difficult' but I hadn't been trying very hard. He was the friend of a friend and when I tried a bit harder I appreciated a good poet but still not one I was making a special case for.

Now, in receipt of a copy of his 1990 book, Watching the Perseids, something clicks and convinces me. The title poem is the best poem I've seen by him, in some ways a pre-echo of the masterpiece Stars Moving Westwards in a Winter Garden By Julia Copus. And now that I know he could do that, it makes me think his other work is a bit more like it.

Of course it is but one needs to look to find a reason to believe and can't do so until one's found it.

Line 2 reads,

Glimmers of something on the jimp horizon,

 

Jimp? I've not seen that before but here it is,

jimp 

It maybe stops you once until you've looked it up but after that it's fine, onomatopaeic and works.

When you know a writer has done something that good once, you're more inclined to believe that some of their other work is better than you thought.