Vol. 58 No. 3 1991 - page 573

GEORGE BRADLEY
565
Latin. Strand asks the same question Socrates did: "What can we know?"
"Very pretty," said one well-known critic to me in reference to
Strand's new poems, "but they're not really
about
anything." That assess–
ment won't entirely do, though. The new poems are about the role of
language and the possibility of meaning, about limits of all sorts. They
are about the poet's advance into old age, about his departure from the
packed frenzy of New York City to the largeness and emptiness of Utah.
But "very pretty" they are. This is literally a luminous book, filled with
descriptions of the spectacular light effects of our western desert. The
lines are lit, sometimes with the crepuscular radiance of Whitman's
"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," sometimes with the fiery "darkness visible"
of Milton's Pandemonium.
Finally, this is an ambitious book. Strand has "immortal longings."
Though the poet contemplates the acceptance and serenity he hopes can
be achieved with the passing years, he simultaneously strives to recapitu–
late the past and speak to the future. In a powerful poem called
"Orpheus Alone," Mr. Strand gives us a parable of the poet's mission cast
in terms of poetry's primary myth. Strand's Orpheus first confronts his
mortality, then succeeds in reimagining his world, and at last bequeaths
his conception, even as he dies, to a future that will be dependent upon
him. What better applause than to close with the poet's own words, as
he transmits his vision of heaven and hell, of earth, to succeeding ages:
... in a language
Untouched by pity, in lines, lavish and dark,
Where death is reborn and sent into the world as a gift,
So the future, with no voice of its own, nor hope
Of ever becoming more than it will be , might mourn.
GEORGE BRADLEY
Poetic Voices
IN
OTHER WORDS: NEW POEMS. By May Swenson.
Alfred A. Knopf
$16.95.
POEMS
1963-1983.
By C.K. Williams.
Farrar, Straus
&
Giroux. $12.95.
POEMS
6.
By Alan Dugan.
Ecco Press. $17.95.
In
Against
OllY
Vanishing,
Alan Grossman speaks about a "poetry of im–
manence" which "reconciles all of its terms at the point of speech ... "
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