WRITERS' CHOICE
KATHLEEN AGENA: First,
some poetry. Norman Dubie's
The Illustrations,
Dave Smith's
Cumberland Station,
and Louise
Gluck's
The House on Marsh–
land
are all remarkable in en–
tirely different ways. Dubie, who
received a Guggenheim this
year, builds
The Illustrations
upon famous and not-sa-famous
paintings. The expansive, self–
effacing quality of his imagina–
tion is everywhere evident:
"These peasants and their horse,
at first light/ Seem absorbed in
the pitch-blackness / ... The
auburn horse/ Represents some
inevitable sadness/ That will
visit each of us, that visits /
These two peasants struggling
in a winter pasture." It is not the
single line or image that startles
in Dubie's poetry, but rather the
way in which metaphors are
extended and wildly incongru–
ous things slide effortlessly to–
gether: "The man at the glass
railway station in Pavlovask/
Crushes out a cigarette with his
boot/ . .. he has memorized/ A
poem in which a brown naked
girl with an ikon-Iamp / Enters a
bedroom: her hair reaches down
her back and the little blue
£lame/ Inside the ikon is like a
dusty grape/ In the beak of a
raven."
Dave Smith has a name that
should have led him to become a
professional boxer or a train
conductor (maybe that's why he
named his book
Cumberland
Station).
Instead, he writes ele–
gant, uncluttered poetry that
leaves you wishing you had in–
surance, or more of it, or were on
a fast train out of town. The
lines are sleek, pure and hit the
mark like finely guided lasers:
"The faces of the young men I
see aren't Christl ... though
they wear the green clothes of
Park Rangers, / the polite smile
of Toledo, and one/ thinks you
sold him a Buick." Hal But
don 't smirk too long; after
several quirky, ironic jabs like
that Smith will quietly slip in
something that will leave you
stunned long after the count–
down. Something like: "There
are apples in the yard, red and
soft/ ... Their seeds more per–
fect than reason."
Louise Gluck's sparse, haunt–
ing poetry leaves you wonder–
ing how she generates such com–
plexity of thought and feeling
from such clean, unembellished
lines . This
IS
from "The
Messengers" in
The House on
Marshland:
"You have only to
wait, they will find you / ... You
have only to let it happen: that
cry-release, release- like
the
moon / wrenched out of earth
and rising/ full in its circle of
arrows/ until they come before
you / like dead things, saddled
with flesh, / and you above them,
wounded and dominant." There
is a trance-like, hypnotic quality
to Gluck's poetry which makes it
difficult to quote two-to-three
