Customer Reviews

Even As We Speak: Poems (Richard Wilbur Award, 3)

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“So far as I’m concerned,” said J. V. Cunningham, “poetry is metrical writing. If it’s anything else, I don’t know what it is.” As general acceptance of Cunningham’s definition would disqualify a majority of contemporary poets, let us insist that his definition is inadequate, that no good can come of it––

But here is one of the remnant of whom it could be said, ‘He is a poet,’ even if Cunningham’s definition applied. Len Krisak’s poetry is metrical writing, in form.

The cover of Even As We Speak shows a picture of Roman columns standing in a field of dry grasses and tall, leafless trees, against a white sky. “Even as we speak,” the picture tells us, “time wears away the old forms.” The picture is beautiful in its evocation of time past and passing, with its faint promise of renewal in the slender young trees.

Turning the cover and entering the poems themselves, the reader finds the old forms made new again. Here are sonnets, quatrains, rondeaus, rhymed couplets, a ballade... Is the reader so indoctrinated with prevailing opinion as to consider these forms outdated, to assume that the poet who writes in form must choose tired themes, clichéd expression, worn-out material? Only look at the titles of Krisak’s poems: “Dying at a Resort,” “Ocean Kayakers in the Morning,” “High School Trench Coat...” Those are not Tennyson’s subjects.

“Father / Shaving / Mirror,” perhaps the most masterful of the poems in this volume, may be read as a correction to the erroneous view that form limits expression. The act of shaving is a form of human behavior that persists because we have arrived at no better way of removing the bristles from our faces. It takes on ritual significance because boys do not shave and men do. The ritual aspect of shaving implies a kind of passage, a handing down of the old ways, a growing into them. Growing older, the poet sees in his own reflection the image of the father he remembers.

“...from here on in, I’ll cut

Not just my own, but someone else’s cheek:
That stubbled cheek I kissed when I was eight.
Its beard is mine now.”

It is the very “formality” of the act of shaving, its series of repeated gestures the same for the son as for his father before him, that allows this insight into what is communicated from one generation to the next. We are reminded that one’s true place in human society is (in Burke’s phrase) “among the dead, the living, and those yet unborn––the community of souls.” Krisak writes, “We greet / The day in one another, realize / Our more-than-homely task...” How more-than-homely is the task of shaving, seen in this light, as form. The poem, of course, is written in form, in rhymed quatrains: thus its heightened expression.

Krisak’s acknowledgement of what a man inherits, especially if that man be a poet, is not limited to the one poem. The volume includes poems dedicated to three contemporary poets who write traditionalist verse, A. M. Juster, Timothy Steele, and Richard Wilbur. At its front is a dedication to a fourth master-poet and mentor, Rhina Espaillat. Krisak is a poet who does not take for granted the gift that makes him a poet, nor the many gifts of example or encouragement received along the way. Even As We Speak is a book replete with gratitude. Krisak’s respect for the craft of poetry, and for those who are skilled in that craft, is evident in everything he does, and he does so much: he is a true servant of the Muse, as his many fine translations included in this volume attest. Petrarch, Horace, Akhmatova, and others benefit by his literary energy. Even Samuel Johnson, that master of the English language, gets help from Len Krisak, as one of his poems written in Latin is translated here.

Begin there, on page 62, with the translation of Johnson’s Latin poem, “Skia.” No one will need suggest that you then begin again, at the beginning.

This is a beautiful book of poetry which might be called "old-fashioned" if it wasn't so darned good.

Len Krisak still believes in meter and rhyme, god bless him, but that doesn't mean he restricts himself to square-rigged topics. He ruminates on everything from Lot's wife to grain silos to "The Blue Dahlia" -- though in the end, of course, he's really giving us a peek at his own soul.

Many of these poems have a stately, faintly melancholy air which gives the collection a remarkable amount of heft. My particular favorites included "View from a Midwest Motel Window" and the mown-grass aroma of "Held."

Normally I love these winners of the Richard Wilbur Award, but I found Krisak's book to be rather weak. Disappointing because Rhina Espaillat and her Powwow River Poets are usually quite good, but Krisak's poems left something to be desired. They didn't sizzle or pop, and quite frankly, I didn't find the technique all that great either (I think he needs to take a long look at his line breaks). Still, there is promise with this poet, especially with a mentor like Rhina Espaillat.

A close friend recommended me this book, so I bought it and waited for it with much anticipation. I've had it for over a month, and now I can honestly say that I wasted 15 bucks.
Mr. Krisak put this reader to sleep on many occasions, and never delighted or informed, or even evoked a chuckle. He is just another drab and dull formalist with a wooden ear that has never heard music.

But I'll give him a star for the effort, since very few poets write in meter today.