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New Books - 09/06
Wesleyan University Press is to be lauded for publishing Grave of
Light: New and Selected Poems 1970-2005 by Alice Notley ($29.95), an
astonishing and beautifully made book by a complex, visionary poet. As Ms.
Notley writes in her author's note, her publishing history has been "awkward
and untidy, though colorful," so it is a particular thrill to see so much of
her work gathered together -- including a large amount of previously
unpublished pieces. Her poems vary from stream-of-consciousness narrative to
wry epistolary exchange to fractured lyric to the incantatory -- "I will
never not make a sound not have made a sound / I will ride this voice as I
change, as always am." The compelling intimacy of the book is provided not
only through the personal but through the mythic. She is telling her own
tale and our tales, with honesty, vigor, feistiness, humor, grief, and
affection. "I'm a wide dust earth / Mountains & river & a sky of blue that
gives back nothing. / To me that's not to be strong, but to be just that. /
Is anyone else in America that? / Is everyone?" (You can hear the music in
those lines, and music runs through her work in a variety of ways.) In her
20's she married the poet Ted Berrigan, quickly having two sons with him,
and she writes unsentimentally and at times movingly about being a mother
and wife. "We're all about as comprehensible as the crocuses," she says of
herself and young children. Indeed she has been particularly attuned to the
treatment of women and their work. But then, her writing just seems
generally deeply attuned -- very much of this world yet touched by a world
beyond it -- "Against all agony a bunch of flowers in the chest / petals
desert spines or small old seashells."
Grave of Light includes an excerpt from another book by Ms. Notley
that has just been published in its entirety, Alma, or The Dead Women ($17.95 Granary). Political, unsettling, sad, the nearly 350-page volume is
a hybrid of current events and fantastic story, poetry and prose, with a
protagonist who is a junkie and god and is joined by a group of spirits. A
challenging and visceral work that was, as the publisher writes, "conceived
by the author when in a state of personal, national, and planetary grief."
As with his poetry, Tony Hoagland's essays are affable in tone and laced
with unusual insight. Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft ($15
Graywolf) gathers fourteen of them in a volume that is, he explains,
"intended for the reader who loves poems and likes to think about them."
Here are, among other pieces, his discussion of image, diction, and
rhetoric -- the "poetic chakras"; an examination of the power of metaphors
("their nature as equations misleads us to suppose that they are servants of
logic"); and a treatise on the benefit of what he calls meanness in
poetry -- "the willingness to be offensive sets free the ruthless observer
in all of us, the spiteful perceptive angel who sees and tells." He draws
on a number of poems, primarily by 20th century poets, as examples, from the
well known to the less so. It is clear that he, too, is someone who loves
poems and likes to think about them.
The Canadian experimental poet Lisa Robertson has a new collection,
intriguingly titled The Men ($16 Book Thug). And "the men" are indeed the
center of this lyric series (the oft-repeated word seems to refer both to
the real and the representational). Written in language that stretches from
the contemporary to the archaic, the poems are political, personal, at times
humorous, and frequently touching and lovely. "In this rough verse /
Unavoidably the men / All bordered with sky blue / Stand alone / And my
little bed also / Bearing nothing more. / I have only the reticence of
intimacy." An unusual book that bears (perhaps requires) rereading.
Rain ($14 Wave), is Jon Woodward's second book, and a curious book
it is. The poems are unpunctuated, lack capital letters, and generally are
in groups of three five-line stanzas. The result is a monochromatic-looking
page, rather like an undramatic rainfall. But the voice at the core of these
techniques is a winning one. His musical approach makes extensive and
effective use of enjambment. The uniformity of form serves the content quite
well. For a sense of his voice try, "some fire extinguishers are obviously /
too small here's one the / size of my forearm I / can't imagine it putting
anything / out it looks like you / could twist the top off". This is
ultimately a very readable, engaging book.
Billy Collins is the guest editor joining series editor David Lehman for
The Best American Poetry 2006 ($16 Scribner). In this edition of the
annual anthology, the less well known (Laura Crook, Mark Kraushaar, for
example) and the quite well known (John Ashbery, Mary Oliver, to name a
couple) rub shoulders with others variously placed on the fame continuum.
Included, as usual, are brief prose explications of each poem by its poet.
The editors write introductions, as well. Mr. Lehman focuses most of his
introduction on the ramifications of Billy Collins's marginally
controversial fame and popularity, and the use and value of the word
"accessible" when applied to poetry. Billy Collins, in his introduction,
entertainingly and somewhat bombastically offers his recipe for an
interesting poem. He also takes issue with the tendency for previous guest
editors to worry about the use of the word "best" in the anthology's title,
preferring to question the use of the word "poetry."
The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley 1975-2005 ($49.95 Univ. of
California Press) joins the first volume of his collected, which covered
1945-1975, and gathers his last nine collections as well as four previously
unpublished poems. The late Mr. Creeley -- that formal address seems
inappropriate for one who in person and on the page was so open and
unpretentious, and it's still hard to grasp that he's no longer here, at
least in the usual way -- was preparing to work on this manuscript in his
hospital room the last day of his life. He had spoken with his wife about
what he wanted to convey in the preface: "This is my life's work. I love it
and stand by it," words more of embrace than ego, and fitting.
Also from University of California Press comes The Fire: Collected
Essays of Robin Blaser ($29.95). An associate of Robert Duncan and Jack
Spicer, Robin Blaser was born in the U.S. but has spent the majority of his
life in Canada, where he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the
Griffin Trust. This hefty volume is divided into two sections, Poetics and
Commentaries, and includes an in-depth chronology of his life and
comprehensive bibliography. Look for an updated and revised edition of his
much praised poetry collection, The Holy Forest, coming soon from UCal.
Oh my, Erin Belieu has taken some caustic and ecstatic swings in her
third book, Black Box ($15 Copper Canyon). "Aren't you just like the daddy
every girl dreams of, with your handgun cocked and your pants pockets full
of dirty peppermints?" That's the beginning of her prose poem, "Shooting
Range." She is staking claim to people and events from her history in the
way someone would stake claim to a vampire. With blows. In her raging
against football and Nebraska, her birth state, she brings forth this
stunning simile -- "in Nebraska, / where football is to life what sleep
deprivation is / to Amnesty International." Wow, a strong breeze blows
through these poems; a wind, really, knocking things off their foundations.
Or is it that she's putting them in their place?
What's up when John Barr, President of the Poetry Foundation and a bit
of a three-piece, shares blurbing duties on a book with the aforementioned
Robin Blaser, one of the revered of the San Francisco Renaissance/Kootenay
School experimentalists? What's up is Everything Preserved ($15 Graywolf)
by Landis Everson. This is the first of a series planned by the Poetry
Foundation (remember hearing about the Ruth Lilly $100-million bequest a
couple of years ago? -- here's a portion of it at work) called the Emily
Dickinson First Book Award. In order to qualify for the prize one must be a
poet over the age of fifty who has not published a book. Do I hear wrinkled
chops being licked? Mr. Everson was active in the Bay Area poetry community
of the late 50's and early 60's, but he stopped writing poetry in 1960,
taking it up again in 2002. One sees slight hints of his early influences,
along with touches of surrealism, in these predominantly personal poems.
Okay, long sufferers, the next award is offered in 2007. Tune in next year
to poetryfoundation.org, the Foundation's website, for details.
Mary Oliver's just published collection, Thirst ($22 Beacon), has as
its profound subjects her grief over the death of her longtime partner and
her subsequent turn toward her Christian faith. While the natural world
still serves as the primary vocabulary of her poems, it is often entwined
here with religious contemplation. And she is still very much a poet of
adoration, despite her recent loss. Here is, in its entirety, her poem "What
I Said at Her Service": "When we pray to love God 'perfectly,' / surely we
do not mean 'only.' // (Lord, see how well I have done.)"
A. R. Ammons's first book was self-published in a tiny edition and has
long been unavailable in its original form, until now. Norton has just
published Ommateum, with Doxology ($23.95), the initial manifestation of
what would become one of the most lauded voices in 20th century American
poetry.
The Hole in Sleep ($9 Wood Works) by Corey Mesler is the latest
letterset chapbook from the press of Paul Hunter, Seattle poet, printer, and
publisher. That was a mouthful, and only slightly shorter than most of Mr.
Mesler's compact, lyric poems. His focus is at times on the erotic and at
times on the advancing years. Here's "Bed Poem": "In my bedroom is a bed. /
I go there when / the world is too much with me / or when / you show me the
secret thing, / nameless, irresistible, hungry." This book was printed in an
edition of 410 copies.
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