MICHAEL COLLIER
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from a question to a specific image and then to a general statement is
typical of Dugan's method. The image expands in a logical, almost
decorous, manner, and yet this manner runs counter to the horror and
pain underlying it. The intense irony of Dugan's observation gathers its
power from a poetic imagination that is free of sentimentality. At times
this imagination is difficult to bear, harsh and cynical. But cynicism is
only an occasional risk that Dugan runs for his giving up of remorse and
regret. The success of his imagination is the clear and unfettered insight
of a poem like "On A Pocketknife. On Carrying," "The blade is junk
except for what/ it carries on its edge: the edge,! and what it carries on
its point/ the point: that's where it narrows down/ and vanishes: its
point/ is balanced on that fine frontier/ between the gross shining metal!
and nothing at all."
For more than four decades Dugan has been showing readers the
"fine frontier" of mid- to late-twentieth-century America. He has
brought his readers to the very edge of this frontier where its darkness
shades into gray, and beyond which is a blackness and emptiness we
would not have the courage to look at if it weren't for the uneasy
comfort of his poetry.
MICHAEL COLLIER
Uttering the Unutterable
POEMS OF PAUL CELAN. By Paul Celano Translated by
Michael Hamburger.
Persea Books. $24.95.
One of the strongest merits of Paul Celan's poetry is the way in which
his work becomes more immediate and comprehensible as time goes on.
Given how difficult and paradoxical so many of the poems are on the
surface, this not only says a lot for Celan's talent and knowledge of what
language can be and become, it also indicates what a fine job Michael
Hamburger has done over the years in translating a poetry daunting in its
obscurity, at times frustrating in its sealed despair, but never so oblique
that we lose touch with the consciousness at work within it. In fact, it
would appear that time, speech, and our own approach to language will
eventually catch up to Cclan, his vision and voice having been ahead of
his time simply through his refusal to confront the unutterable with any–
thing less than a new form of utterance, his own suffering and despair
made palpable by the wrenched vocabulary and syntax he used to give
