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Belated Heavens (Malcolm McDonald Series Selection)

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BELATED HEAVENS, a collection of poems by Daniel Tobin, is one of those books that once read the reader thinks he has the poet's messages embedded firmly in the brain. But then subsequent readings are akin to surprises and discoveries that what appeared to be the point of a poem is not exactly as in focus as the original reading proposed. That is but one of the joys of reading Daniel Tobin. He is a wordsmith, a craftsman of form, a seer and the wizard behind the curtain he pulls when the page is turned to see the next creation.

Tobin teases us into travels to different times and places and then taps us on the shoulder with messages about what is in front of us, here, in our own perception of his immediate presence. He can seduce us into a frame of mind (as in 'Intruders') in which we expect a comedy of sorts, a tale about mice in an apartment, and then turn that into a siege of entrapment so viscerally shared that the comedy becomes horror. 'You heard the pitched squeak where we'd set the trap,/ and I came running when you called to find/ trap, bait, and adversary gone, the raw snap/ come down but the tracked body dragged behind/ that ancient storage box - some broken cripple/ with his cart hauled resignedly toward his end.' etc. While in 'The Shrine' he turns the rats into the scavengers of mines in a battle field ...'They hauled it here, dank temple underground,/ Dragged it through grass risen from the dead,/Through soldier's blood, over Hide-And-Seek,/And the village idiot's shredded legs,/ This pristine altar, hot wire apocalypse,/ Un-detonated in the lift of air.'...

Tobin uses titles, seemingly at times to snare our attention to other meanings:

LUNAR ECLIPSE

The distant band's just tuning up in the life you missed.

Even now it darkens, vaguely occult,

a patch slipped on by a one-eyed blind man

whose haunt throbs with song, raw, Andalusian -

the kind of frisson

that pumps a healing shiver through the blood,

as if in spite of pain the earth were good

beyond plain reason. Up there: cloud-molt

clears like cannon shot, and a hint of red

blue-shifted in the shining. Would I could

take a funicular to the aureole

to find you in the innumerable lights

with the rest oft he beloved dead, the Palace

of Memory brimming and the door un-shut.

Life both living and finished, death, the mystery of the past and the beyond, maps toward survival in this strange world - all are aspects of the poetry of Tobin. These are but meager samples of the joys of reading Daniel Tobin's poems. Other favorites, such as 'THE EXECUTIONER'S MEMORIES', 'LAWN THATCHING ON HOLY SATURDAY', 'WINTER STORM, JERUSALEM', 'A PALM PRINT IN LASCAUX' - each of these and many other deserve sharing with one who does not know the magic behind Tobin's pen. This is a treasure trove of poetry, some of the finest we are likely to encounter from one of America's great men of letters. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, December 10

Daniel Tobin's latest work is an outstanding collection of his latest work which is such an amazing collection of evocative images that are something just short of profound. If I could use a food image, each poem is like a solitary bite of your favorite Thanksgiving dinner-you know there is so much more there, yet in this one small bite, you realize there is so much more. I was tickled when I discovered one of my heros from history, Bartolome de Las Casas, was even the subject of a poem. This four part body of work appears to me to be Tobin's best, creating such clear imagery in my mind's eye taht I have found myself going back to it again and again to savor the craft of this artisan of words.

Short of copying the poems here to illustrate my point, I wholeheartedly recommend this latest work of an amazing poet.