On Earth As It Is/Reeds
Piero, W. S. Di
elsewhere to Benjamin (p. 100). Circumcision symbolizes both castration and sexual fertility(the glans of the penis is exposed as in an uncircumcised erect penis). Thus the male becomes a...
...From the viewpoint of biblical scholarship it is weak: Bakan is dependent on eclectic secondary sources (especially c. 5...
...thelinking of Paul with Hebrews, with some significant consequences (pp...
...The verses authorize sincerity, and the poem becomes its own powerful act of will...
...For all its shellacked perfection of tor/e and image, the poem finally is merely descriptive...
...The "precise moment of the birth of Christianity" is when · Jesus "changed his mind" with regard to the Canaanite woman (Mt...
...I raise these issues because one of the books under review here, Dan Masterson's On Earth as It Is, his first collection, suffers from the weaknesses I'veit can be assumed that he would act in accord with basic psychological tendencies...
...Poetry seldom inheres in a subject...
...One result of tiffs is the proliferation of affectations which are responsible for much of the smugness in contemporary verse...
...From the viewpoint of theological understanding the book is almost completely deficient...
...e 6fl~as wellas an orl~ ps3tebologic.altheorythat c h ~the theories operative i~ suicide prevention...
...it did: Two entries...
...If, as biblical faith has it, God really did act in history, I Shellacked perfection I ON tJUITII AS IT IS Dan Masterson University of Illinois, $7.95, 84 pp...
...Year or Summers...
...Masterson obviously places great value on dramatic incident, but he allows plain incident to swamp the deep metaphoric tale which is the real story poetry is meant to tell...
...The Survivors," for example, tells the destiny of an Irish immigrant family...
...But it is surely better than most of the dull, fussy, academic poetry produced by the Pittsburgh, Wesleyan, and Yale series...
...Ruark carefully avoids the banality of loss: Write down dry veins, the hug Of pain in every kiss...
...High School Handbook Help Your Child...
...Money Back Guarantee...
...Too often in this book it does not...
...Classified Illl RATES: 70¢ a word, one time...
...The subjects of most of Masterson's poems are overwrought, supercharged, newsworthy...
...26 September 1980:539 of information...
...brilliant and original, especially images of violence, as in the opening stanza of "The Tower," about the Austin sniper...
...his mission then became "catholic" (p...
...When the poetry sags inReeds, it does so from an overload of sentiment, a formless spilling over of feeling...
...Here are the opening stanzas from the title poem: We are beginning one more time this evening, Leaving our daughters and letting our lives Uneasily down the hillside, leaning Northward, where the moon means nothing to the heavesOf stone that lie there starlit when the moon is gone...
...it lacks any deep narrative of estrangement, blind pilgrimage, spiritual dislocation, the fear of an absent god...
...He must also, above, all, have a theme...
...Another result is that young poets often feel compelled to go in search of subjects which because of their strangeness or exoticism will make immediate claims on a reader's (or editor's) attention...
...A book that is pertinent and timely...
...The poem, as Masterson treats it, seems more a strategy for avoiding emotion than for confronting its necessities...
...And it is never enough for a poet to have a subject, however exciting...
...If these interpretations are deemed bizarre, it is not because the psychological insights ~all necessarily invalid...
...One hears editors speak of how they must be "grabbed" by a first line, a subject, a "voice...
...He writes a poetry of experience, tobe sure~but a poetry that is also deepened, made historical, by remembered innocence...
...Ruark is unafraid of feeling...
...Letters of not more than 250 or 300 words naturally have a better chance of being published...
...Thus, from a psychological viewpoint the book is rich in fascinating interpretations...
...But beyond this, the poem is all surfaces...
...The film takes 90 minutes...
...In a few poems, most conspicuously in "In this Light," the sentiment tyrannizes the verse and the result is a vague crepuscular impression instead of a vivid daylit truth, Reeds may not receive the notice claimed by books from trade publishers and the large university presses...
...His subjects are near and ordinary, but his theme--the slipperiness of all that we think we possess--is a vital one...
...This is, to my mind, a rather shallow and complacent theme...
...GROOMING YOUR CHILD FOR SUICIDE" was written for ~he9eneralreader as well as the I~and theological communities...
...172...
...Thus the male becomes a "fertile castrate, analogous to the normal female" (pp...
...the poetry lies in the telling of events, not in the events themselves...
...1.50 prepaid from PAX CHRISTI PUBLICATIONS, 3000 N. Mango Ave., Chicago, 60634...
...136-7), is difficult to imagine in a scholarly book...
...Send $3.00 to Bridge Books, Suite 169, 2888 Bluff St., Boulder, Co...
...provocative pncl'mr~nal: Atandmark in suicidolos...
...December, 1850, six days apart: Cremated due to contagion Elizabeth Hanley, age thirtyfour Laura Made Hanley, age six The road to the depot was spotted with snow, his hands raw where he wrung them, each knuckle white at the bone...
...To Do It In High School A must for every teepager...
...murder, suicide, disease, natural disasters--these are his materials, and despite his efforts to cool these torrid subjects by adoptingan aloof, knowing tone, the subjects call too much attention to their own (apparen0 importance...
...Retreats...
...Like many other contemporary writers, Masterson can coin images which at first glance seem...
...Israel Pilgrimage...
...Scriptures;Theology;Spirituality...
...What ~impresses me most about Ruark's poems is his ability to combine intensityof sentiment with ease of execution, something I associate with James Wright's poetry...
...His use of traditional verse forms--his tercets are especially nimble and swift--explains in part the finer discipline of thought found in his poems...
...The losses they endure are presented factually, almost as reportage: The trip to Ward's Island was long, but he ran the gravel road to the hospital, stopping out of breath at the desk to be told the third floor office would have that sort GROOMING YOUR CHILD FOR m~EmII III TOM McEIJEEL such increase~a ~ ~ nofthecausesfor~ ' mMcEhaeelpresentsa theok...
...144-5...
...monthly in advance for more than three times...
...HDS Gibbons Ruark Texas Tech Univ., $5.95, 57 pp...
...W. S. Di Piero ONe_,of several populist misconceptions about poetry is that it must be immediately viscer0 in its intent and appeal, and that it should have obvious designs on the reader...
...The cost is $50 plus shippingcosts both ways and, sincethis is the onlycopy incirculation,preferencewill be given to audiences of 50 or more...
...Commonweal welcomes letters on subjects treated in its pages...
...When Ruark is writing well (and there's much good writing here) the sentiments shine forth from the words, but they also invite the reader into the deeper vision of loss and recompense which the poems offer...
...COMMONWEAL, 232 Madison Ave., NYC 10016...
...A CarroII/|-terpriN, C...
...Let me be clear: I do not question Masterson's sincerity, but I must ask myself whether or not thepoem confirms and authorizes sincerity...
...GONZAGA UNIVERSITY, Spokane, 99258...
...Gibbons Ruark, in Reeds (his second volume), tells personal domestic histories...
...Commonweal: 540...
...63¢, six times...
...Classified payable with order...
...Throughout the book, Masterson's sympathy for his protagonists is unmistakable, and admirable, but disinterestedness is not in itself an act of poetry...
...The Reluscd'" A copy of this prize-winning Austrian "IV production, a documentary/dramatization of the story of Franz Jaegerstetter executed for refusing to serve in the Nazi militaryforces, is now availableinthe U.S...
...p~,~c,6 Price$4.95"~,./ Allowtwoweeks Paperback...
...Rather, it is because they are proposed~as biblical interpretations...
...Soon any catalogue of woe must come to this: My body breaking down Beside your body Till one of us is gone And the sheets are bloody, And I am your lover Taken by the darkness Or a blank light forever Where your lovely head was...
...Spiritual Direction...
...80301.The poem has a point: Let us pity and praise survivors...
...66¢, three times...
...This, however,'is the language of a potboiler novel given the arbitrary stanzaic look of poetry...
...Every line counts for much...
...Address: Gordon C. Zahn, 780 Boylston, 26D, Boston, MA 02199...
...He has spent another night walking through waves of nausea, balancing the pain behind his eyes to keep it from falling through the re.of of his mouth - and out onto the rug, showing itself to be the walnut he pictures growing in a fold of his brain...
...more crucially, he is unafraid to discipline and formalize feeling...
...it is in German with Englishsubtitles...
...Because of this a good deal of American poetry these days consists of realistic anecdote or coy surrealism or stoical melodrama...
...But once he acts, there is a new, theological meaning that can no longer be reduced to a psychological insight...
...It is easy (and often convenient) to conventionalize the abyss and sink oneself into its complacencies, to take comfort from loss because it's such dependable poetic material (and because it's the one thing we are certain never to lose...
...I , daylit truth I been describing...
...15: 21-28...
...Pax Christi PAXCHRISTIREFLECTION/ DISCUSSION GUIDE for prayer, study, action on disarmament, conscientiousobjectibn, education for peace...
...that only the groom in a Catholic marriage takes the vow is simply not true...
...Jesuit Progrcnns JESUIT PROGRAMS: Degrees or Audit...
...Mass...
...forcle~-/'~ OttO0 West Stockbndge...
...TO ORDER: Mail~or mom~orcier to~ Credo Pfil~cation=" "~+"~" DepL CW :', - +~ P.O.,Box124 w~sto~,M...
Vol. 107 • September 1980 • No. 17
