LeRoy is ‘Eyeing the Word

Eyeing the Word, Love Poem of Ettylene is the title of LeRoy Clarke’s newest publication. The book is dedicated to Ettylene whom Clarke states in the preface, that “he left her to marry another woman.” In the dedication, the artist declares his love for Ettylene, the hurt he caused her and his pain of losing the “only woman for him.” The book will be launched on Thursday at the Public Library.

According to LeRoy, Ettylene is used as a metaphor and the poems are a reflection of his experiences with his landscape. They touch on  romance, crime, politics, identity, the question of seeking one’s own authenticity, “and it all becomes one big love affair.” In the preface LeRoy explains: “My poem begins as a lament inspired by circumstances surrounding my relationship with an absolutely wonderful woman, whose love Eye misplaced in the dalliance of my youth. Then, Eye was in my mid-twenties, when Eye ‘upped’ and left her to marry another woman who was slightly older and more matured.”

Is there a poetic analogy with him leaving his youthful country Trinidad to go to the more matured United States? Describing it as a book of testimony he says: “We can see that Ettylene is used as a metaphor which embraces not only romantic affairs but my engagement with shaping a society. So that you would find in the book moments that I talk about crime, in “Corpses,” loss of identity, where I talk of aspiration, dreams. In that manner the book becomes a sort of autobiographical display which spans a period of 60 years,” the 66-year-old artist said. Part of the emphasis, he notes, is to show that “we have a culture that is devoid about that kind of testimony” and to talk about love for one another.

“We do not talk much about loving one another. You hardly hear a man talk about how he loves a woman. Always you hear a woman talk about how she loves a man, ‘but.’   That ‘but’ creates a chasm because when the disagreement gets so terrible that everything sours, she turns on him with a vengeance, as if the former Elysium never existed.” Le Roy is pleased with the reactions the book has been getting so far. “I am very gratified by the responses. I’ve met people who hold the book close to them as if it were theirs, meaning it was their testimony. One woman I was speaking to exclaimed in tears that ‘no one has ever love me like that.’”

The book was  “written in a flash.” “I started on April 25, and it was pre-pressed November 4, 2004, and printed by Christmas. It was a straight-off flash. The sequence in the book is exactly how it was written. I worked very hard on it, steady.” The 165-page book is composed of paintings, drawing and poems and contributions by Caroline Ravello, Pat Bishop and David Brizan. “Seldom have we seen a book where the three genres are authored by the same person,” LeRoy noted.