Customer Reviews

Things on Which I've Stumbled (New Directions Paperbook)

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i heard Peter Cole read his "ghazal of what hurt" at the Dodge Poetry Festival. I had known his wonderful translations of Muhammad Ali, but had not known his own poems. This one drew me in, and not so incidentally, helped me decide to go ahead with a hip transplant.

My first rule in reading a book and reviewing it is to find what is good in it. There is much which is very good in this book and in the work of Peter Cole. He is a premier translator of medieval Hebrew poetry , a master of intelligent and subtle reading. He is the kind of writer who takes into the bones of his own lines what he has read. And all through this collection are felt the transformation of the poetry he knows , commentary enriching the work. In the opening long poem of the work from which the collection takes its title he stumbles upon lines from the Cairo Geniza and that process of stumbling informs his reading and his re- creation of Jewish history and his own way of looking at and feeling the world. In another of the more notable poems he takes in sucks in , the words of poet Isaac the Blind and makes the process of inspiration a spiritual and organic physical one.
Cole's technical knowledge of poetry and his skill as craftsman are something I sense without fully understanding. I simply do not have the knowledge to really apprehend truly some of the wonderful game- playing he is doing in this verse. I think however true poetry- lovers will find in this collection very much to delight in.
That is the plus side and it is very strong. The minus comes from somewhere else. It is in the political, and to my mind therefore, the moral perception which is prominent in a number of the poems. The most conspicious example is a short poem he writes called 'Israel is'. In four lines Cole manages to project a stereotypical and unfair image of those Jews who believe in the Biblical promise of the land of Israel. These lines reveal to my mind an ' absence' which is felt throughout the collection. This absence is of any real connection, understanding, sympathy for the Jews who actually live in Israel, and have made real sacrifices
to defend it. I would almost want to say it reveals not only an 'absence of sentiment' but a real ingratitude.
Cole is once again an extremely skilled and knowledgable poet. I cannot know or judge whether his lines 'live' for others now and will live in years ahead. I personally did not find in them the music or soul I most love in Poetry. But who knows perhaps my heart was not really as open (for the political reason) as it should have been.