Tell Me Again How the White Heron Rises and Flies Across the Nacreous River at Twilight Toward the Distant Islands (New Directions Paperbook) [Paperback]

Hayden Carruth (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

By Finitude In Its Several Manifestations
Circumstances Of Meditation This Morning
Cross My Heart And Hope To Die It Was The Very Same Song ...
The Death
The Event
An Expatiation On The Combining Of Weathers At Thirty ....
How Lewisburg, Pa., Escaped The Avenging Angel
'i've Never Seen Such A Real Hard Time Before'
Letter To Maxine Sullivan
Meditation In The Presence Of 'ostrich Walk'
The Mother
The Necessary Impresario, Mr. Septic Tanck
No Matter What, After All, And That Beautiful Word So
No Supervening Thought Of Grace
Not Transhistorical Death, Or At Least Not Quite
Of Distress Being Humiliated By The Classical Chinese Poets
On The Truistical And Fashionable Eyes Of Albert Camus
The Phantasmogoria
Poem Catching Up With And Idea
A Post-impressionist Susurration For The First Of November
The Ship
The Sociology Of Toyotas And Jade Chrysanthemums
The Son
Sure, Said Benny Goodman
To Know In Reverie The Only Phenomenology Of The Absolute
Underground The Darkness Is The Light
Une Presence Absolue
The Water
When I Wrote A Little
Working
The World As Will And Representation
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Paperback: 83 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (October 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811211045
• ISBN-13: 978-0811211048
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #987,523 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inconsistent, but when it's good, it's very very good., July 26, 2004

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This review is from: Tell Me Again How the White Heron Rises and Flies Across the Nacreous River at Twilight Toward the Distant Islands (New Directions Paperbook) (Paperback)

Hayden Carruth, Tell Me Again How the White Heron Rises Across the Nacreous River at Twilight Towards the Distant Islands (New Directions, 1990)

I was of the opinion for many years that Hayden Carruth was America's finest living poet. These days, he still ranks, but I often find him more frustrating than anything. He's always straddling the line between real poetry and that vague prose-broken-up-into-lines that is only poetry when maybe a tenth of a percent of writers dabble in it.

The first section of Tell Me Again is full of failed experiments in attempts at vagueness. Value-words, as opposed to images, abound. Not to say there aren't a few successes, but the majority of them are very much prose broken up into lines.

Then comes the second section, and all that goes away. One long poem on the death of his mother, Carruth retreats to where all good poets find their best work; the image. It would, for most people, be impossible to write a poem on such an event (especially one as long as this) without straying into the land of judgment and value, and to be sure, Carruth does on a number of occasions. But here, it works, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. Maybe it's because the poem is so rooted in memories (which are, of course, naked image). "Mother" is another of those poems written that make Carruth sound as if he could do no wrong ("Ray," written soon after this, is another; it can be found in Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991, and is must reading for any Carruth fan who's never had the pleasure). But rather than there really being a high pint of his career (if he had one, the late eighties and early nineties would be it), this seems another example of Carruth's ability to let fly with a real monster every once in a while, an ability that has stayed with him throughout his career, from the earliest books to the most recent.

Hayden Carruth is without doubt a fine author. Tell Me Again is a good book, certainly better than 99% of the books of poetry out there. But what makes is worth seeking out and buying is "Mother," the long poem that comprises the book's second section. A definite must-read. *** ½