“I hope that along with evoking an artist’s sensibility and intellect at a young age, my poem also conveys [Richard] Burton’s powerful forward motion in life”
Devil on Wheels
Selected and sequenced from entries during 1939-40 in the Richard
Burton Diaries, when Burton was 14 and 15 years old. He watched films
at two movie theaters: the ‘Cach’ (the ‘shithouse’) and the Regent.
Stranded in Paris, Bulldog, Drummond Secret Police, I Met a
Murderer, Exile Express. The first picture was very boring.
Oklahoma Kid with James Cagney and H. Bogart, Union Pacific.
Went to Joe’s then had chips, Spies of the air, Stanley and
Livingstone, King of the River, Four Daughters. Came home and
read a bit before going to bed. Gorilla. … Gorilla was good, Will
Fyffe and D. Fairbanks Junior in Rulers of the sea. … Billy Bennett
with his great poem ‘Out of the Jungle where men are men’. As you
like it as performed by Form IV. It was very good. T. George was
the star of the evening as Touchstone the Clown. Four Feathers.
Showed what family tradition can do to a man. This man was sent
four white feathers. But he proved them wrong. Frontier Marshal. I
am the Law with E. G. Robinson, I Lost a Million, Naughty
Marrietta, Went to Cach to see D. Wakefield and J. Benny. Went to
Cach to see Arsenal St. Went to Regent to see The Flying Deuces.
Went to Cach to see Will Hay in Where’s That Fire? Went to
Regent with Will to see Juarez. It was an enjoyable picture. Bette
Davis and Paul Muni were the stars. John Garfield was also in it.
We had films in school describing the production of oil. In parts it
was interesting. In other parts it was dry. That night I went to the
Cach and did not tell Sis. It was quite a good show starring Richard
Green and Dix. This morning the milkboy told Sis that he had seen
me in the Cach eating chocolates etc. but I denied it and she
believed me – at least I think so – although it was no crime. I went
to Regent to see Andy Hardy (M. Rooney). No one came with me.
Hunch-back of Notre Dame. Went to Regent in the evening to see
Devil on Wheels.
You know I have been thinking about Richard Burton a great deal in recent months. I rewatched Where Eagles Dare the other day and I was struck by his performance in it. He really was a very charismatic actor, and his relationship with Elizabeth Taylor was legendary, but I wonder what drove you to start writing about him?
I’ve been aware of Richard Burton / Richard Jenkins from maybe eight or nine years old. That’s because my mother was born and grew up in the same village where he was born, Pontrhydyfen, and would talk about him as his fame developed. She was twelve at his birth in 1925, and related to the Jenkins family on her mother’s side. My mother went to see movies at the same theatres as Burton – she particularly loved Charlie Chaplin. Her father was a coal miner, as was Burton’s. She had memories of seeing Burton as a toddler following his mother, Edith Jenkins, along the Pontrhydyfen high street – and she remembers his mother’s death, age forty-two, after giving birth to her thirteenth child, as catastrophic for the family. So to me, Richard Burton was always also Richard Jenkins, who shared my mother’s experience of growing up in a Welsh-speaking, tightly-knit, coal-mining village in South Wales.
Also, since my first collection, The Everyday Apocalypse, I’ve written poems drawing from popular culture. My second collection, The Gospel According to Frank, is a poem sequence that relates Frank Sinatra to figures from Irish, Welsh, and Greek mythology, and from the Old and New Testaments. So writing about Richard Burton was a natural outcome of that dimension of my poetry. ‘Devil on Wheels’ is part of a poem-sequence titled Dust, which uses materials from Burton’s life (public and personal, apocryphal and factual) to explore issues relating to culture, fame, creativity, class, power, and language.
I have a great love for poetry and stories that recycle diaries and letters. Why do we love this kind of writing so much? Is it because we are eavesdropping on a voice that feels authentic and without artifice?
Aren’t diaries and letters inspiring sources for poets? I’m drawn to them because of how immediate and intimate that writing can be. The Richard Burton Diaries (edited by Chris Williams, Yale University Press) are fantastic – and you can view and touch the physical diaries at the Richard Burton Centre archive, Swansea University. Even at a young age Burton was an excellent writer in English, and he was naturally personal and honest in his diary entries.
How much of your own experience is in these poems? Did you go to the movies and see similar films? In the south Wales valleys, the cinema was an integral part of the culture. Do you recognize that in Burton’s diaries?
I went to see movies most every weekend – at the Uptown Theater in Utica. They were a crucial imaginative escape for me, growing up in a conservative Welsh-American community in a declining industrial city in upstate New York. But as with Burton, movies for me were also the opposite of escape – an essential engagement with the wider world.
When I was reading through Burton’s diary entries that mention movies, I was struck by how often he went, and how seriously he took them, focusing on the actors, applying a sophisticated critical attention (at a young age), demonstrating a wide range of reference, and noting how the movies reflect contemporary culture. Interspersed with comments on the movies are glimpses into Burton’s life within his family and community. I excerpted from, and sequenced, diary entries to create certain rhythms and sound patterns, and controlled pacing with end-stopped and enjambed lines. I also sought a progression of shifting tones and content that would convey his deep engagement with movies. Certainly at times Burton did see himself as a “devil on wheels,” and I hope that along with evoking an artist’s sensibility and intellect at a young age, my poem also conveys Burton’s powerful forward motion in life.
