From Publishers Weekly
Like Whitman and former mentor Theodore Roethke, Wagoner, longtime editor of Poetry Northwest, finds inspiration in American experience and landscape and translates it into stacked, searching clauses: "Above the river, over the broad hillside/ and down the slope in clusters and strewn throngs,/ cross-tangled and intermingled,/ wildflowers are blooming, seemingly all at once." The consistent, pragmatic clarity of perception of this 14th collection (following Through the Forest) ushers us without comment or hestitation into such scenes as "A Woman Photgraphing Holsteins": "One bolts, but stops, having forgotten why./ The dewlap quivers. The veins/ of the udder pulse. As round, as large as her lens,/ The eyes turn to the salt marsh and the sea." Several poems center on American Gothic-era memories (red-nosed cops, trained bears, boys who wear "nightgowns"), images kept from cliche by Wagoner's sure touch. A plainspoken formal virtuosity allows Wagoner to penetrate beneath the surface of such folksy harkings back, as when sketching his parents in three-stress lines: "They stand by the empty car,/ By the open driver's door,/ Waiting. The evening sun/ is glowing like pig-iron." Such tonal effects?authoritative but detached, descriptive yet minimalistic, with ironies never quite articulated?are lasting.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
For nearly 40 years, Wagoner has been steadily producing poems that are competent, though seldom memorable. In this latest volume, his strengths and weaknesses are on display. Especially vivid are the poems in the voices of childhood?showing a father laughing, the first day of school?which lead toward "our frail, permanent love." Also of more than casual interest are celebratory poems, recalling (or imagining) the lives of deceased friends, mentors, or literary figures. Still, while many personages are placed within the terrain of animals and vegetation, it's anything but a "natural" world: the bear trains his master, poet Theodore Roethke thrusts two despised roses into his mouth. Unfortunately, the book ends on a cliched and didactic note, positioning an abstract "you" in generic landscapes (the woods, the plain, by a waterfall). There is no indication that the poet has ever inhabited these vistas, let alone transcended them.?Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
