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New Books - 03/06
Averno, by Louise Glück ($22 FSG) A book to be read in one sitting, so
that its lake-cool, lake-clear language can fill you; so that its mythic and
archetypal landscapes and characters (the Persephone story is at its core)
can become uniquely realized for you; so that its author's amazingly precise
way of thinking can startle you awake. We're resisting our usual method of
quoting lines from poems here, because you should come upon them in their
natural surroundings. These are not lovely poems in the traditional sense,
but their unornamented beauty is powerful -- simultaneously searing and
chilling. The personal in the universal, the universal in the personal are
revealed with spare elegance. Love, loss, death, life, the soul, these are
the concerns of Ms. Glück's work -- immense concerns she approaches
fearlessly, capably, unforgettably.
On Earth, by Robert Creeley ($21.95 University of California) This
touching collection, containing last poems and a short essay, was published
near the one-year anniversary (March 30, 2005) of Mr. Creeley's death. The
poems are sweet, with a measured weariness. Included are recollections of
poets John Wieners, Ed Dorn, and (regrets over a set-to with) Paul
Blackburn. Mr. Creeley's concerns are primarily memory and age; the styles,
always direct, range between full nursery rhyme and his traditional (very
American) free verse. The essay, "Reflections on Whitman in Age," focuses on
poems Walt Whitman wrote late in his life. Mr. Creeley includes pieces from
Keats, Dickinson, Williams, and others in his study of, and identification
with, Whitman. He writes in the essay, "things close down in age, like
stores, like lights going off, like a world disappearing in a vacancy one
had not thought might happen. It's no fun, no victory, no reward, no
direction. One sits and waits, usually for the doctor." This hardcover book
is smaller than most: a bit narrower, a bit shorter. It feels right in the
hand -- spare and exact, like the best of Robert Creeley's work.
On Blackwater Pond: Mary Oliver Reads Mary Oliver, ($19.95 compact disc;
Beacon) This first ever recording of one of America's best-loved poets is
long overdue. Ms. Oliver is a strong and moving reader and presents her work
with the careful attention she has given to the natural world throughout her
long career. Recorded in a studio, the CD offers a generous sampling from
her many books -- 40 poems are included, among them the famous "Wild Geese"
and "When Death Comes." The packaging is unusually attractive and contains a
brief essay by the poet and several charming (and demure) photographs of
her.
Shake, by Joshua Beckman ($12 Wave) Mr. Beckman's book is made of three
long poems, themselves made of discreet pieces that could be lyric poems on
their own. The voice here, particularly in the first piece, is big-hearted
and Whitmanesque, embracing the trials of living among and with others; the
deep affection, tolerance, and rage society engenders. "Even in brutal
countries / like our own, the human beast belongs first / to friendship.
Later fields. Later hills and dales." Mr. Beckman's language is rich,
sometimes incantatory. A great depth of spirit shows clearly here. The
second section reads like a benignly dreamy trip through the physical and
social landscape after a horrific violent event. Presented in sentence
fragments, the piece is a powerful evocation of life in a state of shock. In
the third poem it appears things are put in place again. The images are
sometimes surreal ("here, take what I wrote / and as I ride away on the
pulled-part bicycle / the bitter dog will jump out of the mailbox / and the
belly. will fall out into the big world"), and the leaps between them are
often large. Throughout the book one is carried along by Mr. Beckman's
willingness, and great ability, to present emotion and ideas through images;
his generosity is all but palpable.
In the Middle Distance by Linda Gregg ($14 Graywolf) "Is the heart /
supposed to be passive and just wait? / Or should it start talking, even to
itself?," writes Linda Gregg, in her sixth volume. The answer, she suggests,
is for the heart, no matter how injured, to talk, and even to sing.
Meditative and human-paced, her lyrics are like the dusk walks she writes
about and out of - where the world's beauty and sadness are uniquely
revealed in tempering light. The settings for many of the poems are Marfa,
Texas, or Greece, and most frequently the haunted land of memory. While a
sense of loss is threaded throughout the collection, the overall tone is one
of acceptance, resilience -- "What's left is the world. / A place, a road /
where you can walk the last / of each day, the sun finally / forgiving in
its lesser light. Something to walk toward."
Meteoric Flowers, by Elizabeth Willis ($22.95 Wesleyan) Rich, strange,
musical, witty, discombobulating, beautiful, Elizabeth Willis's new
collection of (mostly) prose poems could almost be said to be otherworldly
except it is so very much of this world. Each piece is its own lovely and
inventively wrought contraption -- "In the muddy face of spring, someone's
slinging pretty frosting, fitting our thoughts with pear-like wonder,
something to wear like a ladder in your hair." The muse of this book, she
explains, is Erasmus Darwin, scientist, poet, and grandfather of Charles.
His work _Botanic Garden_, published in 1791, offered her "not so much a
form as a sensibility with which to approach a period of political,
intellectual, and biological transformation." But Ms. Willis's collection is
clearly contemporary -- "Fluent in applejack, I'm knocked off my horse but
gaining on liberty.. We live in the flower so I can't taste anything. It's
that hot, Tex, a new kind of glue. O, I think therefore I green the grass
I'm pinned upon."
AND A FEW BOOKS IN BRIEF (because there are so many
and we're running out of time)
God's Silence, by Franz Wright ($24 Knopf) Almost literally just
received, this collection includes Mr. Wright's customary short, intensely
personal lyrics -- the poem "Heaven" begins, "I lived as a monster, my only
/ hope is to die like a child." The book starts, however, with a seven-page
poem titled "East Boston, 1966," which, in a section called "On The Bus,"
includes the comically grim lines: "I knew that I looked like a suicide /
returning an overdue book to the library. / Almost everyone else did as
well, / but I found no particular solace in this.."
Incredible Good Fortune, by Ursula K. Le Guin ($18 Shambhala) This is
Ms. Le Guin's, the well-known science fiction author, sixth collection of
poetry. Her poems are simple and hard, as in a material that won't give way
easily. Many of the poems here refer to the war, and her response is
inclusive and direct --"The war is ours, now, here, it is our republic /
facing its own betraying terror."
I Love Artists: New and Selected Poems, by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge ($19.95
University of California) The well-known experimental writer Ms.
Berssenbrugge is represented here by poems ranging in publication from 1974
to the present. There are nineteen pages of new poems in this handsome book.
Her work strives after immediacy, as in the beginning of the poem "Red
Quiet," "I look into his eyes and feel my awareness expand to contain what
he will tell me, as if what he says is a photograph of landscape and in my
mind will be a painting of 'Hill,' 'Part of the Cliffs,' 'Purple Hills.' /
These words are the opposite of verisimilitude."
Poet's Choice, by Edward Hirsch ($25 Harcourt) For three years Ed Hirsch,
the ardent lover and promoter of poetry (and of course a poet himself),
wrote a column about the art for the Washington Post Book World. This volume
gathers those pieces, making for a book that is part essay collection and
part poetry anthology. Mr. Hirsch presents and discusses work by over 130
poets here, from Aztec writers to Gerard Manley Hopkins to Nelly Sachs to
George Oppen to Catherine Barnett.
Edgar Allen Poe & the Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments, by Elizabeth Bishop ($30 FSG) This book must contain nearly all things by
Ms. Bishop that had previously gone unpublished. There are a couple of poems
written in childhood, several abandoned poems, and photo-reproductions of
drafts of poems in Ms. Bishop's hand or typescript. One gets to see her
changes being worked out on the page. Perhaps most impressive are the 100+
pages of notes, collecting alternate lines and stanzas for several poems,
and references germane to the poems from Ms. Bishop's letters. This book was
edited by the long-time poetry editor at the New Yorker, Alice Quinn. It
looks to have been a staggering undertaking.
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