Exmoor by Amy,Amy Clampitt was born in Iowa in 1920 and grew up, in her twilight years, to become one of the most respected American poets of her era. Brought up in a Quaker farming community, she originally went to Grinnell College before getting the qualifications to head for Columbia University. Although she always wanted to be a writer, it wasn’t until the publication of her collection The Kingfisher, when she was in her sixties, that she got the recognition that she deserved.
Exmoor by Amy Clampitt
Lost aboard the roll of Kodac-
olor that was to have super-
seded all need to remember
Somerset were: a large flock
of winter-bedcover-thick-
pelted sheep up on the moor;
a stile, a church spire,
and an excess, at Porlock,
of tenderly barbarous antique
thatch in tandem with flower-
beds, relentlessly pictur-
esque, along every sidewalk;
a millwheel; and a millbrook
running down brown as beer.
Exempt from the disaster.
however, as either too quick
or too subtle to put on rec-
ord, were these: the flutter
of, beside the brown water,
with a butterfly-like flick
of fan-wings, a bright black-
and-yellow wagtail; at Dulver-
ton on the moor, the flavor
of the hot toasted teacake
drowning in melted butter
we had along with a bus-tour-
load of old people; the driver
‘s way of smothering every r
in the wool of a West Countr-
y diphthong, and as a Somer-
set man, the warmth he had for
the high, wild, heather-
dank wold he drove us over.
Anonymous submission.
