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New Books - 07/01
We'll lead with Debora Greger's _God_ ($16), a very strong collection. It
begins with a 30-page series, "God in Florida," that reads like Anne Carson
enamored of pop culture. Greger's god, claiming to confound Darwin, says,
"What would I know//about sexual selection?/Though I put on the hat of the
Mouse/the ears mean nothing to me." The rest of the book is more serious,
gravely elegant, and solid.
In 1988, recovering from surgery and radiation for cancer, Ted Kooser walked
2 miles each morning before sun-up. Then he started writing short poems
after each walk, mailing them to his friend, the writer Jim Harrison. The
result for us is _Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim
Harrison_ ($12.95). The poems are titled by date and begin with a simple
declarative sentence (December 8 "Twelve degrees at sunrise."), followed by
short, lyrical passages with a midwestern haiku feel about them.
James Tate adds to his comic, occasionally tragic, and always distinctive
body of work with _Memoir of the Hawk_ ($25). This generous collection, at
176 pages, shines with Mr. Tate's gem-like sense of irony and the absurd. In
the title poem the speaker watches a hawk pluck a baby from a carriage while
the baby's mother eyes a dress in a shop window. He rushes to tell her what
happened, only to have her say "Oh, I know that bird. She's a good bird./She
just took my baby to play with her babies/for a while."
Three new arrivals bring back into print long unavailable work. Kamau
Brathwaite's trilogy-Mother Poem, Sun Poem, and X/Self-have been revised and
expanded, and published as _Ancestors_ ($35). Mr. Brathwaite employs
inventive language and typography to speak for African/Caribbean ancestry
and the struggle against enslavement and colonialism.
Stephen Dunn's prose book _Walking Light: Memoirs and Essays on Poetry_
($15) has likewise been expanded. Mr. Dunn won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry
this year, and his prose is as finely direct and thoughtful as the best of
his poems.
Theodore Roethke's too-long out-of-print prose collections, _On the Poet and
His Craft_ and _Straw for the Fire_, have been edited into _On Poetry &
Craft_ ($15). Mr. Roethke's work has value for any student, matriculated or
not, of poetry. The pieces from his notebooks, which made up _Straw for the
Fire_, are exquisitely challenging and uplifting by turns. An example: "For
poetry, my dear, is not/Things other people said & thought/Nor what you're
thinking."
_The Mercy Seat: Collected and New Poems 1967-2001_ ($30) by Norman Dubie
brings his simply breathtaking poetry into one fine book. Mr. Dubie's poems
sing, see, and think: a true trifecta.
