Possession and loss, rapture and despair: David St. John's narrator in this dazzling collection of poems remains unflinchingly aware that the trajectory between these two states is both brief and irresistible. Like modern Dante's Virgil, he guides us through a mosaic of experiences to depict the vast architecture of erotic desire and communion. The sexual bond, with its potential for the breakdown of all spiritual and physical boundaries between two formerly separate beings, becomes the site of almost unbearable psychological and erotic tension that runs throughout the collection. "The Red Leaves of Night"finds its breathtaking power in a recognition of the necessary impermanence of such communion, and gives voice to that most courageous of modern men--one who grasps the dangers of ecstasy yet cannot turn away.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Kirkus Reviews
The opening lines of the first poem in St.Johns sixth volume introduce his odd and murky intentions: The figure you/Remains the speculative whip of my aesthetic. Throughout this repetitive collection, St. John (Univ. of So. Cal. professor) sacrifices clarity for sultry ambiencehis uncertain diction fails to support the very definition of love he hopes to record. Instead, his poems trade in romantic banalities and lame sententiousness (Peace is where you find it); his oily eroticism, however cinematic in style, reads like scenes from a cheap European soft-core movie, with the titilating parts cut out. St Johns lovers are all anticipation and post-coital sadness (Streaks of sweat on satin sheets); his sexual vocabulary leaves too much to the imagination, his preferred adjectives being naked, nude, and bare. In Two, a tepid bit of sapphism, the poet lingers on scarlet nipples and pubic hair with a wild fox blaze, but more typically St. John walks especially unromantic streets and, elsewhere, smells a sexual musk. St. Johns poems lack polish and blend together in metaphoric heaps of fog and moisture, mirrors and dreams, sunlight and smoke, and, yes, moon and stars. A few poems of singular style emerge from the fetid muck: Memphis smartly extends the conceit of Elvis as a classical god, much in the way Chevalier DOr imagines an aging rock star as a medieval troubadour. The clever rhymes of Night force a certain sharpness that otherwise eludes this bard of greeting-card desire. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"Confessionally breathless, the syntax of these poems seems not spontaneous but rather like an exhalation suppressed....St. John solidifies his growing reputation... and becomes, more than before, the wandering, soulful troubadour of whom he writes." --"Publishers Weekly."
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
lovely and lyric,
By Diana Capul (Univ. of MI (Ann Arbor)) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Red Leaves of Night: Poems (Paperback)
This book was gorgeous. I immediately slid into his perception of places and relationships; his tone and language flowed well and were easy to follow, including everything from contractions in "Nocturnes & Aubades" to a faintly antiquated tone in "Troubadour." The naked body does not inhibit him, either; his descriptions mythologize the natural beauty of the nude. Also, in a contemporary sense, his choice to leave out punctuation for several poems is brave, for he does it well. I only wish I could form poems as lovely as his. Even though the title poem leads the reader "to some newly solitary / & distant home," the journey there is worth it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sensual Captivation,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Red Leaves of Night (Hardcover)
I found David St John's The Red Leaves of Night to be a captivating and stimulating read - both in its thematic sophistication and elegance of language. St John shows a capacity for precise and economic use of language which results in a clarity which fully reveals the strength of his poetic imagery. This strength manifests most clearly in the many sensual metaphors which he uses to describe the human body. These wonderful images accumulate throughout the collection and their highly visual nature makes the poems come alive with images of the naked bodies which populate the text. The poems impressed me with their thematic sophistication, the clarity with which they expressed ideas, the intimacy of their detail and the honest nakedness of the subject matter. The Red Leaves of Night is a collection of immediate, passionate and powerful poetry.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Got poetry?,
By Sarah Welsh (Ann Arbor, MI) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Red Leaves of Night: Poems (Paperback)
These meditations on sexual intimacy, memories of love & desire, the passage of daily and historical time, color, place, and language are both devastatingly beautiful and raw in their emotion. St. John deals in abstractions, but I would not call him an abstract poet. Perhaps you could call it invention, perhaps it is metaphor or alchemy - he is toying with the line between the concrete and the abstract. _The Red Leaves of Night_ begs the question of when a detail - the color of a woman's clothing or the tune she hums - is concrete and when it becomes a mere thought, an abstraction. Ultimately, St. John suggests that concrete and abstract are two sides of the same coin - that every word and every object has the potential to be (or to signify) both, though that potential is neither neutral nor safe.
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