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New Books - 10/04
MERCY by Lucille Clifton (BOA $14.95 paper, $22 hardcover)
Lucille Clifton's poems convey how complicated a blessing mercy is, how
it comes not as a shield against suffering but as a lamp for the path
through. Fearless as she is in naming life's brutalities, she cannot keep
herself from joy, from revealing and praising the dignity in all life --
"bloom as you must i say." In addition to a gathering of lyric pieces, this
collection includes two longer sequences. "September song: a poem in 7 days"
was written in response to the events of September 11, 2001, and was
broadcast on NPR. "The message from the ones (received in the late 70s)" is
a mystical series, both warming and warning -- "the angels have no wings /
they come to you wearing / their own clothes // they have learned to love
you / and will keep coming / unless you insist on wings."
LETTERS TO JANE by Hayden Carruth (Ausable $24)
A collection of letters culled from those written by Mr. Carruth to the
poet Jane Kenyon in the last year of her life. The letters are chatty, with
Mr. Carruth often describing his garden and the weather, explicitly striving
not to burden Ms. Kenyon with any need to reply. He also shares concerns
about his own health and his ambivalence regarding the trappings of his
poetry career. His affection for Ms. Kenyon, his memories of their shared
times (including once comparing anti-depression medications) add poignance.
This book is compulsively readable.
PASTORELLES by John Taggart (Flood Editions $13.95)
The rural landscape is presented with freshness and care in this
beautifully designed book. The poems shine with a rugged delicacy, sometimes
rolled along by repetition -- "where the farmer plowed where the farmer
didn't where he did" -- and sometimes nudged by spareness -- "water is the
principle of all moist things / corpses dry up." Unsentimental, the pieces
allow their philosophical underpinnings to be revealed quietly and movingly,
as in "Pastorelle 7," set at a creek's edge -- "the problem is not finding a
rock there are / many // the problem is not turning / into a rock // the
problem is a problem of how / far how far can I throw myself and how far can
I / throw myself again." But this collection also extends beyond the rural,
and Mr. Taggart contemplates other poets, music and musicians, human
relations, and history, with equal skill and generosity.
BREATH by Philip Levine (Knopf $23)
"The past, not the future, was mine," Mr. Levine writes one-third of the
way into this collection of new poems, and that line could serve as a motto
for the book. As is his custom, his voice is heroically, theatrically large,
and his subjects are steeped in tragedy. Most of the poems concern the tough
lives and deaths of friends and family members. The man who wrote the
prize-winning collection _What Work Is_ writes here from an era he sums up
as, "now / that we're all too old or too dead to work." This is Mr. Levine
facing his death, in the company of his dead. They are strong, seemingly
artless poems; the next logical steps in his evolving legacy.
TRISTIMANIA by Mary Ruefle (Carnegie Mellon $13.95)
"Like I said, the hour of noon was upon me, / its geode cracked open. And
then I felt // the elaborate stillness of a hard-boiled egg / wrapped in wax
paper at the bottom of a lunch pail. / What kind of thoughts are these that
walk right up / and ask if you want to see?" Mary Ruefle's thoughts,
clearly, and they've led to this quirky collection. From list poems to
little fables, her work is both disconcerting and endearing, her vision both
dark and embracing. Among the answers to the title of her poem "Why I Am Not
a Good Kisser," she includes, "Because every kiss is like throwing a pair of
doll eyes / Into the air and trying to follow them with your own." One could
easily compare her to the character from one of her poems who is trying to
persuade others that "intimate strangeness [is] no foe."
ADDITIONAL ITEMS OF INTEREST
The annuals are here. Specifically, THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY 2004
(Scribner $16 paperback, $30 hardcover), guest-edited by the adventurous Lyn
Hejinian, with series editor David Lehman. The other annual to hit the
shelves is the 2005 POET'S MARKET (Writer's Digest $24.99), a compendium of
magazines and presses with guidelines regarding their submission needs.
Our friends at The Academy of American Poets have now put their archive
in the compact disc format, and we have just stocked up. New releases
include a 1969 reading by Robert Duncan, introduced by John Ashbery, and
Volume I of an Audio Archive Anthology, featuring 21 poets. Single CDs are
priced at $15; doubles (such as the James Wright) are $20.
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