Thu, 24 Feb 2011

PALACES OF THE NIGHT by Gerry Grubbs

The poems of Gerry Grubbs' Palaces of the Night have a haunting, ethereal quality about them that is reminiscent of W.S. Merwin. Grubbs' brief lines move deliberately down the page, slowing and drawing out the reader's attention.

"Keep Looking" is a characteristic example:

Keep Looking


Down by the shore
A man wanders as if looking
Among the waters debris
For what he has lost

It may be near sundown
The last lingering light
Lying on the broad water
As if it were leaving
On the night train
For the front lines
And may not return

And the man knows
He will keep looking
Until he finds her

 

The image of the searching man, looking near the water for a missing love, in the near darkness, is striking. The final, resolute triplet is a light in the dimness.

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SMALL CATHEDRALS by Naton Leslie

There's a quiet power in Naton Leslie's poems in Small Cathedrals. These poems, which comprise multiple variations of the sonnet tradition, engage their subjects with rich and precise lyricism.

I am especially fond of "Not a Definition":

Not a Definition

The new baby slumbers in her wide lap,
mouth slipped from the proffered breast. The mother
has pulled her blouse down like a closing blind.
The baby wakes and looks pained, so she lifts
her blouse and the mother and child sit, sleep
and feed for hours, the woman still nursing

as she talks with her friend. Mothers never
own the words which describe them. She might nurse
though not tend the ill, raise but not till land,
bear child when she ceases to carry it.
She can only be certain that mother
as verb will draw praise and condemnation.

She can only be certain of hunger,
silent mouths pulling her in need, want, need.

This poem opens up from an intimate scene--the nursing mother--into larger vistas of "need, want, need." In doing so, it evokes, at least to my mind, the scope of a cathedral, which soars into greater vistas within its space. Leslie's book is aptly titled, and borne up by the poems.

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IMAGINING THE SELF by Laverne Frith

The poems of Imagining the Self by Laverne Frith are quiet and understated. Yet their fluid lines move strongly into perception that enlarges the reader's awareness.

Consider "Winter's Lock":

Winter’s Lock

It is like that at this time of the year,
the sub-zero temperatures locking the wheels

of motion, freezing the inhabitants into
a winter’s consciousness. Outside, a coastal

scene is laid out in outline form, from
the snow-capped distant hills against a

light blue sky, spreading to a rough
shore, then to the manor overlooking it

all, everything caught in the pack of
hardened snow. So much now is given to

acts of waiting, to attending to the
barest of essentials—clearing the paths,

securing the boats, making ready for
the impending thaw and the inevitable

return to the sea when once again
you will sum the years, the joys and

the disappointments; you will somehow
strike a balance.

The rhythms of this poem, back and forth, carry the reader between extremes, "the joys and/ the disappointments," and, by the closing couplet, the poem has indeed managed "to strike a balance."

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THE UNCERTAINTY OF MAPS by Nina Corwin

There's a lovely wit in Nina Corwin's The Uncertainty of Maps that belies the book's unsettling concern, a confrontation with the abyss, with nothingness, with a remote and inscrutable universe. I admire that wit, which gives warmth to what might otherwise be a chilly reading experience.

"But Silently" is an example of Corwin at work:

But Silently

"Is this what you mean us to think, does this
explain the silence of the morning...?”
- Louise Gluck

The ocean waves won’t tell.
Likewise, the trees don’t speak our language.
They just rustle softly in the night.

And so we turn to you,
Oh, Great Celestial Psychoanalyst

hoping you’ll put it all together:
A plus B equals C, something more conclusive
than “I think, therefore I am.”

But silently, just out of view,
from behind the fainting couch

peeking out of bushes, allegedly
from deserts or mountaintops
too craggy to access

your occasional grunts and inscrutable nods
are infinitely open to interpretation.

Looking skyward we lie, couch-bound,
and wait for answers.
Absent that, we project our own:

You are the scowling father, punishing
father, the loving father we never had.

So we spill out our fears and transferential
longings, our most
precious resentments, serve up our sins

in a great buffet of contrition
waiting for your pronouncement.

For you to say
something – anything. To make sense
of this earthly mess.

Set against the silence of the whispering trees, of rolling ocean waves, the silence of the Great Celestial Psychoanalyst is deeper, more terrifying. Yet the image of the psychoanalyst, in its absurdity, is comforting as well.

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