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New Books - 03/04
Trouble in Mind by Lucie Brock-Broido (Knopf $23)
This, her
long-awaited third collection, ushers Ms. Brock-Broido back into the lively
world of the contemporary lyric. Though tinted with loss, the poems often
are exhilarating to read, so skillfully rendered are they. Their rich
language -- at once almost medieval and quite current -- is cut with a
certain edginess in form and voice. Ms. Brock-Broido writes, "Perhaps it
isn't possible to say these things / Out loud without the noir // Of ardor
and its plain-spoken elegance." Music is plentiful; who can resist, "Heart
be strong as a burden beast, / Common, clumsy, sunlit, oxish, kind." And
perception is animated by abundant imagery enhanced by adjective and
simile -- "A moment / Perfect as a bee suspended // In the perfect weather
of a honey jar."
Sad Little Breathing Machine by Matthea Harvey (Graywolf $14)
Ms.
Harvey's collection makes for a strange world, or rather it's our world
refracted through her unusual lens that leaves us with these quirky, at
times unsettling poems and prose poems -- "Not everyone gets a dollop // of
cream & some ground glass / to look through. It's a spectacle // all right."
The book is spangled with puns, pronouncements, instructions, dialogues,
pleadings, sarcasm, and little narratives, and all of them off-kilter --
"Unfasten the crows & the clouds / come crashing down." This is the
follow-up volume to her popular _Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the
Human Form_.
How long we have waited for Louise Glück's Proofs & Theories: Essays on
Poetry (Ecco $13.95) to return from its publishing limbo. At last the
planets are in accord (and Ms. Glück has been named Poet Laureate), so this
wonderful book is back on our shelves. These are beautifully written,
breathtakingly reasoned essays that open a door not only onto Ms. Glück's
work but onto the essence of the poetic art. To whet your appetite, we
include below a section from her piece in praise of George Oppen --
"As a reader, consequently as a writer, I am partial to most forms of
voluntary silence. I love what is implicit or present in outline, that which
summons (as opposed to imposes) thought. I love white space, love the
telling omission, love lacunae, and find oddly depressing that which seems
to have left out nothing. Such poetry seems to love completion too much, and
like a thoroughly cleaned room, it paralyzes activity. Or, to use another
figure, it lacks magnetism, the power to seem, simultaneously, whole and not
final, the power to generate, not annul, energy."
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