Hereford Eye
April 21st, 2005, 10:04 AM
Received Attempts at Being on Tuesday. Here, in a ramble of sorts, is my reaction/response to my first experience of your work. Am still waiting for the novel and more poetry to arrive.
There is much that I enjoyed, much that rang true for me. Still, those nuggets were dearly won from the unrelenting suffering, line after line. It was like driving in a steady rain, the wipers pounding out the same message over: bleak, black, bleak, black. Despite that, accept my appreciation and gratitude for:
The Breach,
“you have the right to remain silent.”
“a poem can either enter another present which differs from the present in which it is written or it cannot.”
“when we are touched by lyric we wake to the intolerable beauty of our world.”
Lenz
The Famine
What drew me to the book was an excerpt I saw somewhere on the web: “Does the cell grieve when it splits? Does the ovum wince at the sperm?” Out of context, I was enthralled at the imagery. In context, I kept posing counter questions: “Does the cell take pride in passing on its hard earned experience? Is there an ovum orgasm when accepting the sperm?
Reading this volume reminded me of driving on the old roads in the Southwestern U.S. deserts crossing the stretch from Albuquerque to Socorro late on a summer night in 1963 before I-25 had been constructed. My friend and I had been driving 38 hours, alternating between us. The road was ruler straight. Ahead we picked up headlights on high beam, lights that nearly blinded us. The road so straight, the air so clear, we stared at those headlights for more than 30 minutes, in time cursing them and their owner to the deepest pits of hell. Traveling at speed required high beams; we had ours on. So, both cars must have felt the continuous, unrelenting torment, our retinas screaming at the abuse. All we could hope for was finally passing the other vehicle and returning to the pleasure of having the road to ourselves.
Before that happened, we were forced to gaze this at concentrated, obsessive light riveting our attention, not permitting escape from what it was the light wanted us to see, which was itself.
Attempts at Being is very much like that.
I wonder if your other volumes remember the intolerable beauty of our world.
There is much that I enjoyed, much that rang true for me. Still, those nuggets were dearly won from the unrelenting suffering, line after line. It was like driving in a steady rain, the wipers pounding out the same message over: bleak, black, bleak, black. Despite that, accept my appreciation and gratitude for:
The Breach,
“you have the right to remain silent.”
“a poem can either enter another present which differs from the present in which it is written or it cannot.”
“when we are touched by lyric we wake to the intolerable beauty of our world.”
Lenz
The Famine
What drew me to the book was an excerpt I saw somewhere on the web: “Does the cell grieve when it splits? Does the ovum wince at the sperm?” Out of context, I was enthralled at the imagery. In context, I kept posing counter questions: “Does the cell take pride in passing on its hard earned experience? Is there an ovum orgasm when accepting the sperm?
Reading this volume reminded me of driving on the old roads in the Southwestern U.S. deserts crossing the stretch from Albuquerque to Socorro late on a summer night in 1963 before I-25 had been constructed. My friend and I had been driving 38 hours, alternating between us. The road was ruler straight. Ahead we picked up headlights on high beam, lights that nearly blinded us. The road so straight, the air so clear, we stared at those headlights for more than 30 minutes, in time cursing them and their owner to the deepest pits of hell. Traveling at speed required high beams; we had ours on. So, both cars must have felt the continuous, unrelenting torment, our retinas screaming at the abuse. All we could hope for was finally passing the other vehicle and returning to the pleasure of having the road to ourselves.
Before that happened, we were forced to gaze this at concentrated, obsessive light riveting our attention, not permitting escape from what it was the light wanted us to see, which was itself.
Attempts at Being is very much like that.
I wonder if your other volumes remember the intolerable beauty of our world.