BOOKS
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grace, a careful sounding of human circumstance that omits nothing
of its dreads and despairs, but which nonetheless manages to find
under just what conditions beauty and redemption are granted. This
is one of the most honestly made and least assuming first books I
have encountered. Corkery is difficult to excerpt, for her poems are
carefully woven wholes. Here, nevertheless, is the opening passage
from "Letter from Marcellus, Maker of Fountains, to Cominia His
Mother":
... Yes, I understand quite well. Within
two days the Senate's edict will be out,
my fountains tightly gagged. The central cistern
will be rimmed by crowds who wait in lines for what
they thought was theirs . They'll think they only mind
the wait. They will not know it is the absence
of the leap enfeebles them and queers their dreams
at night. The surge the spirit needs to live
is gone without the fountains.
With little adj u stment these words can be said to describe the place
of poetry in our or any culture.
SVEN BIRKERTS
