W.W. Norton & Company

Traveling Light

gwen — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Pastan’s latest collection reaches beyond the usual everyday subjects and themes of a “domestic poet,” a label that has long underrated her abilities. While many of the poems in Traveling Light continue to display her familiar manner of sensing dangers that lurk beneath quotidian objects and rituals, Pastan demonstrates her broader capabilities by grappling with more political matters in the fourth section of the book, “Somewhere in The World.”

In the uncharacteristically political fourth section, Pastan comments upon a number of defining historical moments, including World War II, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and most intensely, the September 11 terrorist attacks. These events are often personalized, brought down from abstraction to the level of an experiencing individual at a specific moment. Consider, for example, the short poem “Anniversary”:

For us it was the anniversary
of love–September 11th,
the day my parents met, a year later
the day they married.
So when I see or hear that date,

my heart by habit lifts
for a moment, just before
it plunges–history’s
dirty thumbprint
staining the calendar.

Present here are Pastan’s classic distinguishing qualities–the discovery of the extraordinary within the ordinary, the concrete image at the center, the simple and elegant language, the ominous tone. But while history often represents cyclical loss and failure in Pastan’s poems, it would be erroneous to classify her as a negative poet. Pastan’s pessimistic expectance of loss may permeate through her poems, but it is overcome by her faith in the individual’s innate moral goodness and power to turn any course of events. In “Weights and Measures,” for example, she argues that one’s ultimate natural allegiance will not be to any political or ideological stance, but rather, to love:

Wouldn’t I break my word,
wrap myself in any flag (stars,
or sickle, or rising sun) just
to be with you? …

In other sections of the book, nowhere are Pastan’s talents more compelling than when she reflects upon her state as an aging woman. Absent are the clichéd complaints one would expect over the loss of physical beauty. In their place are nuanced meditations on the oppositions that animate life–youth and old age, forgetting and remembering, change and permanence, sadness and joy, good and evil, destruction and renewal. In mediating between these oppositions, Pastan asserts her ever forceful mind and impassioned spirit over her failing body as she does in “Any Woman”:

Age has nothing to do with me.
Lust still raises its purple flag
and envy its green one–
don’t I repent the same sins
every year, make the same resolutions?

Particularly evocative and lyrical are Pastan’s Eden poems, which summon the archetypal figure of Eve to explore women’s complexities and concerns. Pastan’s Eve is not Milton’s passive and subservient Eve, but an Eve who took a lover, who questions God’s motives, and who takes credit for the Fall as the unifying narrative of humankind. And just as Pastan is given to weighing oppositions, so does her Eve embody both humankind’s most exalted qualities and most dangerous faults. This Eve is all at once sensual, astute, vain, foolhardy, wise, and vulnerable.

Pastan’s “mind of spring,” the vividness and potency of her thoughts and feelings, shows through her keen powers of observation and illumination. At each turn in Traveling Light, the reader is surprised with a startling image and recalled to a profound truth previously taken for granted or neglected. Pastan attunes us to the possibilities of each given moment, to their dangers and rewards, and in doing so enriches the kinds of realities we can create.

Written by: Abigail Licad, December 23rd 2010

No Surrender

barbara — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Ai

W.W. Norton & Company

No Surrender is poet Ai’s posthumous collection and indeed bears the imprint of a full life lived. Written in Ai’s characteristic poetic monologue, each poem is a story that inhabits the liminal space between the more expository world of prose and the oft cryptic and somewhat mystical realm of the lyrical. While the stories told in the poems themselves may or may not be autobiographical, themes common to the poet’s own background and experience figure prominently throughout this twenty-one poem collection: luck, alcoholism, Catholicism, relationships, motherhood and miscarriage, race, and ethnicity.

No Surrender looks back at the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and tales of these past times seamlessly share the pages with the days of QVC and chemotherapy. Marriage is usually portrayed as a means of escape or survival. As I read, unexpected gender and ethnic roles raised questions on perception, projection, and the power of memories resurrected.

In the poem “Womanhood” a woman called Michael, named after her father who was “neither angel, nor saint” but a “lousy bastard underneath the smiles,” reflects on the tragedies of her life which are at once quotidian and monumental. This reflection is refreshingly without the stormy veils of blame and resentment. Turning the tables again on who is customarily thought of as the oppressed, in “The Hunt” an Irish man’s mounting conflict over the Scottish slave girls owned by his Choctaw wife comes to a head in scene of complex domestic violence.

Each multi-page poem is composed of fairly short lines written with a skilled economy of words leading them to read like a beautifully spoken story, although a few of the poems read like dreams with non-linear sequence and rough or entirely absent transition. In some of the longer poems repetition, alliteration or rhyme is used effectively in a section or two and then drops off, which left me feeling like I had transitioned into a different poem than the one I had begun reading. Please note my review comes from reading the advance uncorrected proofs.

From babies that escaped certain death to white slaves and brown masters to a male rape survivor, No Surrender reads like true history, telling what really happens in people’s lives beyond others’ perception of who they should be and the stories they can claim as their own. The stories told in No Surrender are inclusive of the authentic experience of individuals regardless of the collectively understood story of the social, cultural, or genetic groups to which they may belong. Somewhat like the genre-spanning poetic form Ai used to tell these stories, their truth comes from shining light on the thresholds and boundaries erected by preset expectation and seeing beyond.

Written by: Matsya Siosal, October 9th 2010

The Second Blush: Poems

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Molly Peacock

W.W. Norton & Company

Whenever I come across a poem that resonates with me, I feel as though I’m meeting a long lost friend who reminds me of what’s really important in life. The Second Blush is a collection of poetry by Molly Peacock, a poet and author based in Toronto, who writes about everyday life with the eye of an artist and the voice of a poet. Peacock, who found love in her forties with her high school sweetheart, writes about love, marriage, loss, and everyday angst and absurdities in a way that is both fresh and familiar.

In “The Cliffs of Mistake” she writes:

To know you’re making a mistake as you make it, yet not able to stop, is to step off a cliff, expecting To scramble backward and up through the air to stand on the outcrop you stepped from, even though it can’t unhappen as you backpeddle wildly with the second step, looking far below onto the moraine of pain, you anticipate later, which is now only the shock of recognizing the result...

Poetry tends to be an overlooked art form in our culture, but a gifted poet has the ability to make us stop and pay attention to both the hum drum routine of our lives and those unexpected elements of surprise that catch us unawares. Poets and artists of all genres have the capacity to teach us how to live mindfully and not just speed through life on auto pilot.

At the risk of too much disclosure, I recently read some of Peacock’s poetry out loud and found the cadence and sound of the words gave even more strength and power to her work. A writing coach once advised me that reading your work out loud will make it better. Peacock’s work needs no further improvement, but if I need some inspiration for how to see the world in all its simplicity and complexity, I will find my way back to Peacock’s poetry.

Written by: Gita Tewari, February 24th 2010

More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:31:00 +0000

By Williams Julius Wilson

W.W. Norton & Company

Author Williams Julius Wilson, a Harvard University professor, delves into the issue of race in his latest book, More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City. This book provides a detailed account of how African Americans are more likely to be economically disadvantaged due to their race. Before opening this book, the readers should be aware that this is a serious read and requires one be quite interested in the subject. Wilson attempts to explain why being poor and black is a double-edge sword, which oftentimes results in extreme poverty. The book draws upon numerous studies that analyze race; this is not surprising, as Williams is an academic.

More Than Just Race is an eye-opener for those not familiar with the hardships of people who are poor and dealing with anti-Black prejudice. Wilson points out that while more responsibility is needed in the Black community, public policies can be put into place to eradicate “laissez faire racism”--a belief that blacks are responsible for their own economic predicaments, and therefore, do not deserve "special" support from the government.

Wilson points out that people who consider themselves conservative may automatically point a finger at the “victim.” Wilson also notes that overall, Black people living in the inner city are more likely to be poor due to a lack of job skills. But he argues that numerous structural and cultural forces are in place that create race and class privilege. Wilson cites the presidency of Ronald Reagan--a president who focused heavily on the economy while in office. According to Wilson, poor people became even more disadvantaged under the Reagan administration due to his “trickle down economics.” Wilson isn’t making excuses for poor inner city Black people, though. He explains that a give-and-take process is needed for them to overcome institutionalized racism. The priority point he hopes to get across to readers is that being Black and poor isn’t a cut-and-dry situation. There are many factors that contribute to people living in these circumstances. And fortunately, we live in a nation where these circumstances can be overcome with the necessary help from the government.

Written by: Tiffany Winbush, March 6th 2009