Customer Reviews

Supernatural Love: Poems 1976-1992

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Okay, I am saying it now for all the world to read, every little bug and bird that zips into this review. This is the book that should win every award flying around us in the known universe, and maybe the unknown universe, too. I hereby nominate this book for the Pulitzer and if the publisher doesn't do it he/she is missing out on one of the few times in his/her life that the action should be taken for the redemption and the welfare of the art itself. There are lots of ultra-chic poets out there writing some kind of dulled down intellectual psuedo crapola and this poet is not one of them. For capturing the true glittering moment in a psychic dream and letting it grow and develop into an unforgettable poem that changes the way the reader perceives the world and human interaction, this poet does it at least four times in every book she has written. When opening a book written by another poet, I am usually brimming with a little jealousy: here is somebody who has a few books, right? I am usually all set to tear apart whatever verse is there and measure myself, my voice, my vision against it. It takes a pretty original kind of imagination to sweep me away and make me forget my original, super-critical intent. But it happens with this poet, it happened. I am very grateful for the beauty and insight that was seeded and grew into living entities in these poems. In short, I am wowed. So I may well be Nobody, like Emily said everybody should be, but I say this book is transcendental all right; the book transcends the meaning of money and I am happy I had the good sense to buy it and recommend it to my friends who are just as critical as me.

If you enjoy the poetry of Thomas Hardy, W.B.Yeats, Robert Frost, Tennyson,Longfellow, John Masefield, Wilfred Owen, Phyllis McGinley, C.S.Lewis, Walter de la Mare, W.H.Auden, E.A.Robinson, A.E.Housman, Calvin Miller, Richard Wilbur, A.E.Stallings, you will revel in this collection of a lifetime's oeuvre.

In the words of Auden: In the eyes of every author,/ His past work falls into four classes:/ First, pure rubbish he regrets/ Ever having given bother/ To conceive. Second, mixed masses-/ For him, most painful - mongrel pets/ Of good ideas which impatience,/ Incompetency brought to nil/ (Fair notions fatally injured). Third,/ Lacking importance par creations:/ These three, bulk of the oeuvre which skill/ Plied. Fourth, poems worth the warmest word/ Of honest gratefulness from him,/ In volume depressingly slim.

Gjertrud's collection has few of Auden's first three classes. The best verse is the epitome of organizational skill in bringing together meaningful, moving elements into a whole greater than the sum of its parts that 'arrives', 'fulfills' and reaches the reader in a memorable way. Like all good poets, she attempts to amplify what she sees and experiences by probing for correspondences that relate dissimilarities. Through rhymed communication, she invites inquirers to share her discoveries and reveries. Poetic worth is never dependent on sheer quantity, contrary to what Stalin once said about the quality of his armed forces arrayed against Hitler ('quantity has a quality all its own'); Poetic value depends on importance,interest, stimulability, and depth of exploration. Too much poetry published these days is a pretty pond a mile wide and an inch deep. Gjertrud invites us to probe the depths off shore while heading to the surface for appropriate breathing stops. The final merit of a body of poetry is: will it stand the test of time and be referred to again and again, still speaking fresh and anew to each generation as many of the above-mentioned masters. I would suggest that 'Supernatural Love', her most powerful poem to date, achieves the following standard: efficient and effective symbiosis between form, sound, imagery, theme, motion, emotion, thought, music, substance, color, tone, texture, connotatively rich rhyming and spiritual importance. In this magnificent masterpiece, all aspects of poetry cross-pollinate each other in a mysterious, indefinable perichoresis(mutual interpenetration and enhancement creating a whole greater than the mere sum of parts). They are inseparable and,as here displayed, prove that a good poem cannot be said in any other way in any other words. Bravo! A tour de force to be welcomed on all new-formalist poetry shelves.

For me the best of the three books collected in Supernatural Love was her middle book, The Lamplit Answer, from 1985. This contains the fascinating retelling of Sleeping Beauty, "Imaginary Prisons," and the wonderful poem "Sonata" which frames almost the perfect vortextual line "But I'm not Milton, nor was meant to be." In nine words this line conjures the spirits of Eliot, Shakespeare and of course Milton. I found all the poems in section II through IV of this book highly relevant (The Chopin poems which comprise section I were a little too encyclopedic for me.) The poems from A Gilded Lapse of Time show an evolution in her style away from metrical and toward free verse, and after the title poem, a homage to Dante in true Bloomian style, the rest are concentrated on religious texts and art, not areas I find hugely motivating.

Her writing is so beautiful -- always so beautiful. This book offers the complete first 3 books of her career, marking the developments of this incredible new formalist.

Supernatural Love is a collection of poems, or rather a collection of three previous books: Portraits and Elegies, The Lamplit Answer, and A Gilded Lapse of Time.

If you already like Gjertrud but don't own any of her books, this is probably a good place for you to start. I had been to see her when she gave a reading here earlier this year and wasn't particularly impressed, but (big but) I tend to not respond well to readings in general, and often need to have something in front of me. Two other students I know in the Creative Writing program sang her praises and recommended the book, so I decided I'd go ahead and give it a shot.

My initial impression holds. It's fair enough to say I'm in no place to malign her, and I'm not, really. This just isn't what I read poetry for. Her grandiose, historical narratives will probably get you off if that's the sort of thing you're looking for, but those pieces feel lifeless to me, and leave me thinking everything, author included, is being taken far too seriously. All but one of the poems that I picked out as having liked are from the second book, The Lamplit Answer; if you feel you should still check out Gjertrud's poetry, I would recommend starting THERE (and, perhaps, stopping there.) One of these poems, Sonata, is, in my opinion, a brilliant poem. It's cheeky, has charm, attitude, wit and enough passion to engage the reader and make us forget we're reading poetry in form.

To clarify, if I was just reviewing the middle book, I'd be giving it a good rating and probably recommending you pick it up, and calling it a must-have for anyone who is big on storytelling poems. I'm not, however.