A gift for his wife, Jay Wright's Polynomials and Pollen explores the complementary exigencies of abstraction and physicality. In five sections, each arranged under the aegis of a tutelary concept—from the Yoruba, Akan, Bamana, and Nahuatl—the book is a constellation of protophilosophical inquiry into notions of order, disarray, evidence, flowering, and return; it is also a dynamically visceral work whose feelingtones register rage as well as devotion.
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A gracefully philosophical poet, Wright is committed to spanning the divide between thought and being. In Polynomials and Pollen, he draws on ancient cultures of Africa and the Americas and crafts the poetic equivalent of mathematical expressions that pair metaphysical musing with elements of the living world. In poems beautifully balanced and feathered with slant rhymes, Wright contrasts the weight and demands of the body with the flight of memories and the spirals of thought. For all the complexities of concept, his language is limpid, his images startling in their beauty and poignancy. Wright casts a spell that, like music, yields meaning beyond literalness in a dialectic between abstraction and “fleshy desire,” intellectual anatomization and “the lexicon of need.” --Donna Seaman
Review
"Jay Wright is one of the five or six living American poets whose work will survive." --Harold Bloom
"Jay Wright is a brilliant and original poet, difficult and allusive, beating his own unpredictable path through a variety of terrains." --John Hollander, New York Times
"Wright invites us to roam the cultures of the transatlantic world, to speak and know many tongues, to partake of the rituals through which we may be initiated into modes of individual and communal enhancement. In yet another age of great uncertainty, Wright enables us to imagine that breaking the vessels of the past is more an act of uncovering than of sheer destruction, and that we need not necessarily choose between an intellectual and a spiritual life, for both can still be had." --Robert B. Stepto
"Jay Wright is a brilliant and original poet, difficult and allusive, beating his own unpredictable path through a variety of terrains." --John Hollander, New York Times
"Wright invites us to roam the cultures of the transatlantic world, to speak and know many tongues, to partake of the rituals through which we may be initiated into modes of individual and communal enhancement. In yet another age of great uncertainty, Wright enables us to imagine that breaking the vessels of the past is more an act of uncovering than of sheer destruction, and that we need not necessarily choose between an intellectual and a spiritual life, for both can still be had." --Robert B. Stepto
"Jay Wright is a brilliant and original poet, difficult and allusive, beating his own unpredictable path through a variety of terrains." --John Hollander, New York Times
"Wright invites us to roam the cultures of the transatlantic world, to speak and know many tongues, to partake of the rituals through which we may be initiated into modes of individual and communal enhancement. In yet another age of great uncertainty, Wright enables us to imagine that breaking the vessels of the past is more an act of uncovering than of sheer destruction, and that we need not necessarily choose between an intellectual and a spiritual life, for both can still be had." --Robert B. Stepto
"Jay Wright is a brilliant and original poet, difficult and allusive, beating his own unpredictable path through a variety of terrains." --John Hollander, New York Times
"Wright invites us to roam the cultures of the transatlantic world, to speak and know many tongues, to partake of the rituals through which we may be initiated into modes of individual and communal enhancement. In yet another age of great uncertainty, Wright enables us to imagine that breaking the vessels of the past is more an act of uncovering than of sheer destruction, and that we need not necessarily choose between an intellectual and a spiritual life, for both can still be had." --Robert B. Stepto
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Over seventy years of life experience,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Polynomials and Pollen: Parables, Proverbs, Paradigms and Praise for Lois (Paperback)
Eleven books of poetry and over thirty plays are nothing compared to the over seventy years of life experience award winning-writer Jay Wright brings to the table in his anthology of poetry and wisdom in "Polynomials and Pollen." Although promoted as a gift for his wife, any reader is sure to enjoy Wright's words and his look into philosophies of order, chaos, the natural evolution of life and so much more. Brilliantly written from first page to last, "Polynomials and Pollen" is highly recommended to community library poetry collections.
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