Sometimes there are books I just cannot connect with. It is something that happens to me with fiction books all the time. It happens much less often with poetry books. Doubtless this is because of the way I usually choose my poetry books.
With poetry, it is easy to pick of a volume, skim pages, and read random poems. If enough strike my fancy I purchase the book. Every now and then I take the path I usually do with fiction which is to give-in to lists I have made from book reviews.
Charles Simic is a poet I see referenced often. And I have picked up his volumes over the years at bookstores, followed my usual habit of skimming pages and then put him back. This time I came across a hardbound, first-edition copy of Jackstraws in a thrift store for $2.00. And so just picked it up and put it on my to-be-read shelf.
While I will routinely abandon fiction books when I grow restless with them. I almost never do so with poetry books. Jackstraws was no exception.
What I like most about Simic’s poetry is the white-space and the spareness of language. Those familiar with the poetry I write, know that that is something I am always striving toward.
What I had a hard time connecting with was the often dark and hopeless vision of many (most) of the poems.
As I have mentioned here before, as someone with depression I am looking for hope and meaning in my art. While I am constantly aware of darkness, I need help finding light.
That is not, of course, to say that that is what I think poetry needs to be, or should be, for everyone. I am saying that that is what I need it to be. And while I found some of Simic’s lines to give me that, most did not.
Some Favorite Lines from Jackstraws
The world beyond
My window has grown illegible,
And so has the clock on my wall* * * * * * * * * * *
Tell me something of your study
Of lengthening shadows,
The blazing window panes
Where the soul is turned into light…* * * * * * * * * * *
Our prisons are dangerously overcrowded
And seething with violence, I’ve read today.
Is that why this small town is so empty?* * * * * * * * * * *
And finding only more shadow,
More silence smudging like ink.* * * * * * * * * * *
In the ensuing emptiness
And the fading daylight
That still gives me a shudder
As if I held in my hand
The key to mysteries.* * * * * * * * * * *
The undeveloped film
of the few clear moments
of our blurred lives
