Customer Reviews

Living Things: Collected Poems

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Just this morning (May 1, 2009), The Writer's Almanac posted a poem from this collection that I liked so much I came to Amazon to buy the book.

MUSIC

When I was a child
I once sat sobbing on the floor
Beside my mother's piano
As she played and sang
For there was in her singing
A shy yet solemn glory
My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked
Why I was crying
I had no words for it
I only shook my head
And went on crying

Why is it that music
At its most beautiful
Opens a wound in us
An ache a desolation
Deep as a homesickness
For some far-off
And half-forgotten country

I've never understood
Why this is so

Bur there's an ancient legend
From the other side of the world
That gives away the secret
Of this mysterious sorrow

For centuries on centuries
We have been wandering
But we were made for Paradise
As deer for the forest

And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.

Anne Porter has been described as a religious poet, and she is that. But she is also a personal poet, an observer of nature, and a poet of quiet positivity. She sees ordinary things in a way that makes them magical; conversely, in her writing the great mysteries become accessible in ordinary things. There is not one poem in this book that does not speak to the reader.

Anne Porter paints at least as well in words as her husband, Fairfield Porter, did in oils. Her sensibility is acute, her word choices splendid, her images vivid and appealing. Just look at this verse from her poem "Consider the Lilies of the Sea:"

"The two joined petals of a small
Tooth-white clamshell stand ajar, and mimic
The opening of wings or of a songbook;
Leaves that a minute and obscure
Death sprung open in a depth of sea;
Held in one's hand, they still present
The light obedient gesture that let go of time."

To read Anne Porter's poems is to discover what you know innately. Her vivid reminders are an AH HA!
Like "The squirrels run like script along its boughs." (Oaks and Squirrels)
Or, in describing Maine islands she says, "These granite and limestone islands,
These tops of flooded mountains Are scattered all over the bay."
Or, " The live coals of hawkweed, The daisies' fiery white, And finespun birdsongs shiver
Over the scraps of forest." (On the Maine Islands)
Her love expressed is contagious.

Anne Porter paints with the word. We especially liked her poem on the Native American. She weaves religeous spirituality into her writings.