People Live, They Have Lives: Poems (The Miami University Poetry Series)

Do these poems struggle? driven to the language that cannot change a life - until it does. Or as might be said: poetry doesn't care about us.At the same time, the syntactical object interests endlessly. At first an almost believable order. Then, one sees (hears) that it fails. The transparent now opaque - like the centipede who cannot walk for thinking on its legs.And how rescue the self (=form) from the myriad permutations? How purge the dark with sun? Silence will not do, though not the worst solution and an obvious temptation.And so love, death, and rebirth are said over and over, as they have been said over and over, because the speaker knows nothing else to say. Until Father speaks from his grave, until senile Mother transmits his voice - as thus, in fact, the orders are called forth. Until the poem lumbers up on their high-octaine psychic fuel.