The Moment's Equation [Paperback]

Vern Rutsala (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2004

This wonderful book of poetry, which was a 2005 National Book Award finalist, is filled with scintillating visions of life, home, work, and family expressed in accessible language through which the poet magnifies daily events into art. "The Moment's Equation" takes us through decades of America. There are evocative settings, memorable events; there are many roads to regard, many lives to consider. Each poem journeys to a destination. With a remarkable deftness and an unerring sense of direction, Vern Rutsala gets us there." -National Book Award Judge

Editorial Reviews

Review

I know of no poet who has grown more surely, steadily and triumphantly over the years. -- Carolyn Kizer

Vern Rutsala has been producing enduring poetry for as long as I've known him. -- Lawson Fusao Inada

About the Author

Vern Rutsala is the author of twelve collections of poetry, including "The Window", "Laments", "The Journey Begins", and "Little-Known Sports".

Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: Ashland Poetry Press (June 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0912592540
• ISBN-13: 978-0912592541
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,439,016 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars National Book Award Committee Redeems Itself, November 5, 2005

By 

Desertmartin (Boulder, Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Moment's Equation (Paperback)

It's rare in recently history that the National Book Award has had so many fine examples of poetry represented in its short list; along with Vern Rutsala's The Moment's Equation there are books by W. S. Merwin and John Ashbery, two of the finest American wordsmiths of the last forty years. And that being said, it is certainly rarer still that one of the lesser known among these national poets is the most deserving of the 2005 National Book Award. Vern Rutsala's eleventh book of poems is one of his finest, as if many of the subtle intensities of his early best collections, Laments, Walking Home from the Icehouse, Backtracking and The Journey Begins, were here distilled into a new vision of poetic certainty. Rutsala has never shied from confronting the world in its own terms, a complex human environment full of irony and self-deception. If this new collection differs from earlier ones, it is perhaps in its firm commitment to the experience of ongoing life as the substratum of all genuine knowledge. Although the poet's work has always been about the affairs of living day to day, it is with this present Award Finalist that he has achieved a collection-consistent language of existential insight. His adventures here include both moments of the past, done with a knife-edge straightforwardness and a refusal of sentimentality, as well as visions of what always lies ahead: "The real world hummed / far away-at home / grayness drained from / everything, leaking / into the air that / smelled fresh / if we had known / the difference" ("Real Things"). Rutsala's insights include restitutions of the commonplace and calculated dissections of the present. In a fine, satiric poem, "Portland Hosts the Second Coming," the poet plays on Christian mythos only to show us the city itself transformed back into its earlier, more human, candor: "...the old Portland / Hotel shoulders through pavement, / knocking over high rises and pizza / joints and settles lightly / into its old place like it hadn't / gone anywhere. It's perfect, just like / its picture." The wonder in Rutsala's voice is authentic, and yet always with a hint of knowing. We are not led into the false emotionalism of so much of today's neo-Romantic littérateurs. Instead, we find a wealth of assured instances of the poet's uncovering the world we all wish to understand. If you were to buy only three volumes of poetry this year to take to that new time in order to start civilization afresh, I readily suggest you include Rutsala's newest collection.

5.0 out of 5 stars Engagingly producing an invasive and practical approach to living and being amidst the modern realities, June 11, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Moment's Equation (Paperback)

The Moment's Equation is an exquisite collection of poetical rhetoric from the philosophical mind of Vern Rutsala. Engagingly producing an invasive and practical approach to living and being amidst the modern realities, The Moment's Equation deftly maneuvers and manipulates the English language. Run Sheep Run: There may be no road back,/those days going bright/and vague like overexposed/photos, then dimming/into some impenetrable ink/of the past. But we must try./And somehow it drifts into being./It was a wide field, above it/the log house with rough floors,/a blue checked cloth/on the long table, a stove/like a battleship, a steam/from black iron pots of vast/and bubbling nourishment./All of us, so many nephews/and nieces, so many sisters/and brothers, divided into/teams on the wide field./And at the command we all/ran with ecstatic fear from/one side to the other--/Run Sheep Run!--through/twilight again and again until/the dark called us in/to eat from the huge iron pots/and then fall into sleep in fields/of swirling grass white as wool.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Get to know Vern Rutsala., February 6, 2006

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Moment's Equation (Paperback)

Vern Rutsala, The Moment's Equation (Ashland, 2005)

The Moment's Equation, a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award, is Vern Rutsala's eleventh book of poetry. For a man whose career has pretty much flown beneath the radar until the NBA nomination, Rutsala is an exceptionally accomplished poet. Fine work, this, in the sort of "plain Ben" style epitomized by, say, Hayden Carruth or Ted Kooser. Those who have always found themselves flummoxed by poetry might do well to start with Rutsala, while those who have already cultivated a love for the form will get a lot out of his work, as well. Recommended. *** ½