> I ^ I z I w H c*I D I H H < H * I w H H H I Q I O I * I one's existence/' she said in a recent interview, "an intellect creates its own treasure and secretly competes with inevitability." Thus, Plavi sneg invokes exten sivepsychological reflection, describ ing the change of "inexorable snow" to "sweet snow." It converts pain and cold to sweet knowledge, con templation to transcendence, as the blue color of the title suggests. All observations have the same direc tion and purpose as the snow: to hint at a time of peace, purity, and repose, toprepare human beings for another change in life. SvetlanaTomic Bethesda, Maryland Sabra Loomis.House Held Together by Winds. New York. Harper Perennial. 2008. xii + 84 pages. $13.95. isbn978 0-06-157715-4 At its best, Sabra Loomis's House Held TogetherbyWinds has a scintil lating, reverberant persuasiveness; at itsworst, it reads like solipsistic autobiography. One readily under stands why James T?te selected it for theNational Poetry Series; his own poetry could be described in thesameway, thoughTate's work is often simultaneously far more elu sive and more persuasive. There is a deep interiority to these poems, which are mostly set in a domestic theater of the past, populated by a grandfather,grand mother, uncles and aunts, mother, father. The point of view (often Dickensian) is one of a little girl turnedwoman, and this layeringof the two viewpoints (one informing the other) affords one of thebook's richestqualities. At thecore of these poems is a speaker looking forkeys tohidden rooms,hidden somewhere among the foldsofmemory. The best moments arise when thebook's imageryand metaphoric ity are expressed in succinct, clear mysteries, for example, "This stone house: a cradle, / balanced on green hill-waves" or "Separation: a nar row rope bridge / across a chasm." Two of the finestmoments in the book both come froma prose poem, "The Ship": "[The ship] was draw ing streamers,hundreds of colorful streamers after it; likea bird coming to rest on a hilltop, or a rainbow breathing the air"; and several sen tences later, "Drawing near the sun, theywere themselves again, with the great salt stars, tastingof grief. They saw the girth, the far edges of childhood, and labored to draw in the sky like a sail." This is fine poetry, and one wishes more of the poems would aspire to this level of interest. Unfortunately, many poems or passages within poems are novelistic or quotidian in theirdetail. One has no way of knowing, of course, but the poems sometimes feel self-indul gently autobiographical. This isonly a problem when thepoetry becomes more gratifying for thewriter than ^^^H forthe reader. Finally, at the level of ^^^H technique, the poems employ what has become the default rhythm of ^^^H contemporary prosaic freeverse: the ^^^H line as syntactical unit. This leaves ^^^H one very importantaspect of poetry largely underemployed and results ^^^H in rhythmicallyflat,sometimes even ^^^H dull, prosaic poetry. In this regard, ^^^H Sabra Loomis ishardly alone, yetwe are allowed to expect more. Fred Dings ^^^M University ofSouth Carolina ^^^M At the core of these poems isa speaker looking forkeys to hidden rooms, hidden somewhere amongthefolds of memory. G?ven Turan.Qki? Istanbul. Yapi Kredi Yayinlari. 2008. 58 pages. 4 ytl. isbn 978-975-08-1349-8 -. Toplu ?iirler, 1963-1993. 2nd ed. Istanbul. Yapi Kredi Yayinlari. 2008. 221 pages. 12 ytl isbn 978-975-363 A respected critic,novelist, and pub Usher, G?ven Turan started out as a poet, and itisas a poet thathe is still best known. Qki? (Exit) is the fourth book in his long poem sequence Gizli Alanlar (Hidden spaces). The Zen-like, "finger-symbol" poetics ^^^J and reclined, contemplative tone ^^^J are characteristic of the poet's later ^^^J IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIM 74 i WorldLiterature Today ^^^H ...
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Dec 19, 2024
Wenwu Chen + 5
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