Customer Reviews

And the Risen Bread: Selected and New Poems 1957-97

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Daniel berrigan, S.J.,poet,priest,confessor,witness has his second volume of collected poems.{the first,published by doubleday in the mid-1970's,is out of print.}It is curious that Berrigan is so overlooked{ignored]. His poetry is superb:supple,elegant,concise. Due to his political{religious}witness, he has been consigned to the fringes{where he is quite comfortable}Unfortunately, this has made his poetry less accessible,which is really too bad. For I believ him to be one of the great poets of our time. This collection begins with his Lamont award collection,TIME WITHOUT NUMBER,up and beyond HOMAGE TO GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS, and some uncollected work. From Vietnam to prison, to an elegy for some young children on block island, to an homage to his 10 year old namesake killed,these are vital poems, lush with language,deeply heartfelt,written about life as seen by one of its more ineresting participants . Beautiful,lyrical rich poerty, a feast for the mind and heart. Do yourself a service,read this book,savor these poems,for in many of them you enter a holy realm,a place of peace.

It's rather sad the mainstream press has overlooked this wonderful collection. Before he became known for his activism in the name of peace, Dan Berrigan was-and still very much is-a poet of grace and enormous insight. This collection gives new readers the gift of being able to trace the progress of his work through more than 40 years.

Daniel Berrigan's early work is his best, written in a time when the poet realized that "poems are made of words, not ideas" and took a craftsmanlike attitude to each syllable.

As has been noted, "Time without Number" was justly lauded by the modernist titan, poet Marianne Moore; and Berrigan's second volume prompted Moore to exclaim, "I read with reverence anything Fr Berrigan writes"; indeed, the poems of "Encounters" are unsurpassed, esp "Trees: October" and "A Statue of the Blessed Virgin Carved in Wood" with its initial line "Wood is noble when it forgets resemblance." There is, too, a poem which ends with the lines "is flown, is fled, is spent / skeleton : element."

Up until about 1964, the poems were poems and not slogans. In fact, Berrigan is perhaps at his best when he pays tribute to other poets, notably Wallace Stevens and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Berrigan's hymns to Hanoi are virtually indistinguishable from the great glut of anti-war matter that was written at this time, and his elegy to Thomas Merton -- though evidently heartfelt -- is slack, sprawling, and aesthetically infirm (the last lines, something about lotus blossoms) are just plain dippy.

In the later work, it helps the reader if she or he is sympathetic to Berrigan's political views, but there are felicities: Berrigan's lean athleticism of language, and way with a pleasing embedded rhyme or calculated dissonance, are knacks which serve him well.

But the priest/poet does, too often, confuse sloganeering with art, and that is a foible we find somewhat difficult to ignore.