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Public Poetry, Kevin Walzer's meditations on poetry, publishing, business, and other creative pursuits
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Kevin Walzer, a poet, poetry publisher, husband, and father.
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Wed, 14 Mar 2007
Book of the Day: The Weather of Dreams by J.E. Pitts
One shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but the cover of J.E. Pitts's The Weather of Dreams is entirely apropos: a road through wooded land in winter, barely plowed. The photo has an ethereal quality; the tire tracks mark but do not mar the larger scene that contains them. Such is the quality of Pitts's poems: they tread lightly through the landscapes that they depict, never subsuming the world in which they take part.
Here's one example of Pitts's craft:
Young Hawks
Objects in mirror are closer than they appear
while driving down the turnoffs to places with names
like Pleasant Hill and Locust Grove right before dark.
Young hawks fly in a circle above the car.
They are tracking some animal
moving through the tall grass.
Young hawks can swoop down suddenly
when they grow bored.
They do grow bored–it becomes old hat
to track your eventual prey across a field.
It’s the same in war when the targets are lined up
and the planes fly in and bomb them to smithereens.
The answer nags--
The animal on the ground, looking for a thicket.
Young hawks, waiting on the right moment.
A driver in a car, watching
the grass move in the mirror.
All of us trying not to think of
all the things, just ahead,
that lie in wait.
Aware of hawks flying above, Pitts pauses, "trying not to think of/all the things,/just ahead,/that lie in wait." Here is a speaker who is willing to observe without intruding. This fine poem is characteristic of Pitts's method.