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New Books - 02/05
Cooling Time by C.D. WRIGHT (Copper Canyon $15)
This special book gives
its reader the feeling of having been welcomed into a conversation with the
interesting and forthright Ms. Wright. Composed of short prose pieces, with
an occasional aphorism and poem, the collection concerns the making or
studying of poetry, either directly or metaphorically, as in the two longish
(4+ pages each), beautifully written meditations-- one on an eccentric and
influential character and the other on a wooden box, its history and
contents. Ms. Wright's prose is disarmingly immediate, and her thoughts are
expressed with an almost folksy precision. "While some writers are choosing
sides, others are building intricate arches over the gorge. Laying track."
W.B. Yeats, Ron Silliman, Miles Davis, and others make appearances here; to
be admired, argued with, and listened to closely. Ms. Wright makes her
points with a winning ferocity. "I submit you have to strike down your own
mythology about yourself, your loves, your ravishing and atavistic
homeland." Her wit and the width of her embrace are admirable. "There is
not much poetry from which I feel barred, whether it is arcane or open in
the extreme. I attempt to run the gamut because I am pulled by the
extremes.. I think antithetical poetries can and should coexist without
crippling one another. They not only serve to define their other; they
insure the persistence of heterogeneous (albeit discouragingly small)
constituencies." Ms. Wright is a pleasure to read and to think along with.
Small Weathers, by MERRILL GILFILLAN (Qua Books $14)
"[E]ach place sings
/ its own sweet thoughts / in the guise of its native botany," Colorado poet
and prose writer Gilfillan writes in his latest collection. Tenderly,
unsentimentally, he records the botanical thoughts of places and the comings
and goings of their critters, from cicada to human. His musical poems and
prose pieces can be plainspoken and straightforward or elliptically spare
yet are always evocative: "Avocets in mudpuddles / cooling their feet / from
the Great Sadness // and butterflies / down from the Moreau hills on
business, in and out // of the imaginary. The nighthawks / blasting in early
evening sky / (Ancient Gladness)." His work seems not only deeply honest but
deeply loyal to the world-- "allegiance / is the province of verse."
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