The Past

...Open to nearly pierce one's thighs...

...the battlefield is likely to be the Federal of the Ruhr in 1923, Czechoslovak resis- Some proponents of civilian-based deRepublic itself...

...Adand calling for further study...

...five books, and editor of two, look sidered time - which is next to But I guess I'm here...

...Consequently, even the simple poems are set in the context of a larger But despite lessons of earlier poets (or I don't know about this new life...

...But there is no overstate- perhaps partly because of them), this Even though I burned the ashes of ment in such poems...

...Whatever hasn't arrived...

...Where everything was turning to Nothing tests the morale of a nation as words...

...So I must take ing for interesting employment, any nothing, merely what vanishes, care...

...fining objects...

...current circumstances civilian-based dealternative strategy...

...First Day of the Future," ends this way: fire...

...lent role of the Polish Army, first government study...

...York, N.Y...

...Kinnell provides us with along the road between here and The early poems are derived from what long lines of catalogued memories, as there - which the young know seem to be simple, even simplistic well as sharply etched, pointed details...

...Even Sharp, whose Sharp tries to make a case for the fense would make the most sense as parlifelong work on the strategy of non- Soviet Union's ` special vulnerability to tial supplement, an insurance policy violence makes him ideally suited to civilian-based defense...

...Nonviolent re- words about the days of a child, about the sistance has obviously enjoyed some N an earlier collection of his verse, many relationships of love in our lives (or success in this century, but mostly in A The Avenue Bearing the Initial of lives in our love), and about how time circumstances where the threat of vio- Christ into the New World: Poems rewrites all relationships...

...In so doing, it would bolster the defense by calling for further study, by had against the Soviet Union in the past...

...If allies, because that attack invites retalia- instead allied themselves with Aquino...

...Battlefield use of nu- cesses of improvised civilian-based de- They may, but Poland is not evidence in clear weapons would pose that dilemma fense against invaders: German resis- point, because Moscow had an alternamost acutely for West Germany because tance to French and Belgian occupation tive to invasion...

...The break between the two hitting a bit of steel, in the arWarren, and James Wright...

...15 August 1986: 441 This is a book that pleases, even sur- sionary, that combines the solid object Here I must turn around and go prises, by gathering weight in the read- that we must first attend as image with back and on the way back look ing, that seems to take on layers and the transcendent understanding the poet carefully to left and to right...

...A poem late in the volume, water, or, almost as often, with air and warming itself at a fire...

...For here area of country...

...Between Here and There," we find the jets of intensest nourishment go poet listing significant memories at- squawking into a pail, This is an especially American poetry...

...His ability to mitigate the impact of and set fire to the ticket that might wider context, somehow raised just a direct image by raising the scene, have conscripted me into its slightly into prominence...

...We see this talents composing my emigrathings, appears in the brief poem, in isolated phrases that ring true: "We tion papers, "Prayer," that opens the second of the have to hold our children up to lean on I think I want to go back now and book's three sections: them./ Everyone who could help goes or live again in the present time, Whatever happens...

...political underpinning of NATO stratgovernments as well as outsiders...

...severely as prolonged occupation...

...Yet even the against catastrophic failure of military make the case for civilian-based defense, most ardent anti-Communist might not means, not as a way-station to renunciawavers between calling for its adoption want to put his or her belief in Soviet tion of military means altogether...

...In the first poem of the back there what is is is what volume, appropriately titled, "The Road where someone milks a cow and I want...

...years of Polish resistance to the imposi- substitute for those means in special cirAs an alternative to current NATO tion of martial law under Soviet pressure...

...There is a responsibilof those memories to the journey toward and flight: ity in his work enforced by our recognideath...

...I've tried to choose for one how closely we rely on memory to give they stand over final quotation a passage that evokes not value to life, nor of how important death our dead, who will only that moral responsibility which is for helping us give value to the imerupt into flower as soon Kinnell places in memory and language, mediate, the daily, the passing...

...We find in this lence was latent rather than entirely 1946-64 (1974), Kinnell has a lovely latest volume a preoccupation with what forsworn and where the oppressor regime poem for Robert Frost which contains Coleridge cared about in his finest "con- or its military and popular supporters certain lines that seem a fit epigraph for versation" poems...

...Contact John Garvey, c/o Com- us to the beginning of the book and de- I'm not sure I'm going to like it monweal, 15 Dutch St., 5A, New liver us to our own considerations of that living here in the future...

...Teaching a possibil- and yet can make one's elbows one has to keep facing the right ity...

...civilian-based defense is to deter Soviet tion in kind against NATO forces in Sharp cites other, at least partial, suc- leaders, they must believe it is effective...

...Yet Even in Poland, where civilian-based de- egy, especially when an attack is imthis stance is unlikely to move govern- fense did enjoy some temporary success, minent and alliance unity is most ments, who are inclined to respond to the key factor may have been the ambiva- threatened...

...Western Europe...

...Kinnell never loses sight of just tion of death and our unhesitating plunge On these cold days toward it...

...tached to places along the "road," a road where someone is hammering, a (There are echoes here, for example, of that begins in concrete, but ends solely in bit of steel at the end of a stick Whitman, Frost, Williams, Robert Penn the mind...

...But that...

...Few David Lee Garrison Everything, in a gentle, graceful, unaspeoples have been able to withstand the suming way, is turning into words: temptation to collaborate...

...It is a poetry sorts of description comes in this long, chaic stillness of an afternoon, that combines the pragmatic with the vi- prose-like line: or somebody else saws a board, Here I sat on a boulder by the back and forth, like hard labor Situation Wanted winter-steaming river and put in the lungs of one who refuses to Commonweal columnist, author of my head in my hands and con- come to the very end...

...Yet a state may be reluctant to coup d'etat...

...Yet, even though civilian- tack from within...

...Yet under tool, it is unlikely to muster support as an cieties, like Northern Ireland...

...Love, ture whole, on making words that reveal regime in the Philippines is a recent Love' of things, duty, he said that wholeness, and on using those words example: it would not have succeeded And made his way back to the shel- to burn some kind of purification into us without, in effect, a slow-moving mili- ter all...

...Houghton Mifflin, $5.95, 57 pp...

...We find a poet intent - shared important norms with the op- his own work in the mid-eighties: on making himself and children and napressed...

...This would internal weakness to such a stern test...

...In are infinite and all others know memories - chasing a piglet, rocking a "Cemetery Angels," for example, he are not - get used up, that's it...

...Further study, moreover, is not likely to prove conclusive enough to still the two critical doubts about civilian-based Speaking with tongues of memory defense: whether or not Western polities can sustain it for long and whether or not THE PAST No longer sheltering him, the it can sucessfully deter and defend Galway Kimell house against Soviet attack...

...instead, the simple "American" sound is richly Kinnell's its flag again and again and the real are given fresh value by that own...

...As those familiar with Kinnell's work as memory and human shape but also the understanding of what rot out of them, each bent Donald Hall has so gracefully referred to might expect, almost every poem places forward and with wings as "taking one's place in the story of us in some relationship with land and partly opened as though leaves...

...significance...

...10038...

...Only that...

...layers of.meaning gradually, almost brings to our relationship with those de- For here, the moment all the spaces without acknowledging that movement...

...vance preparations for civilian-based deappear to leave him in the tactically ad- And lack of advanced preparation is not fense could reinforce increased reliance vantageous position of responding to likely to explain away the limited and on non-nuclear means for European decriticism of civilian-based deterrence and short-lived success that the strategy has fense...

...A good exam- through metaphor, into the realm of vi- ranks forever, ple of the poet's desire for the presence of sion, as in "Cemetery Angel" is his own even though I squandered all my things, and for the gift of presenting particular American poetic...

...Precisely at the point of tance to Russian control and ouster of the fense see it as a supplement to military utmost peril, therefore, the unity of Dubcek government for eight months means, others as a total replacement for NATO might be most threatened - and after the 1968 invasion, and the five military means, still others as a partial by a choice of its own devising...

...cumstances when the country's military strategy, civilian-based defense would With advance preparations, Sharp ar- forces either have already suffered defeat eliminate the two most dangerous fea- gues, civilian-based defense can do even or have themselves seized power in a tures of nuclear deterrence, the risk of better...

...Europe would pose the same dilemma, if tary coup, in which the armed forces re- threatening to resist a Soviet invasion and not for the United States, then for its fused to turn their guns on the people and then carrying out internal repression...

...Commonweal: 442...

...The overthrow of the Marcos He turned...

...indefinitely...

...That reluctance would tent of the society's advance preparations based defense may be useful as a critical be especially pronounced in divided so- for waging such a defense...

...The last three "lines" of the poem bring one dies...

...That is a point worth serious such proposals by simply ignoring them...

...child to sleep, rowing across a lake as a gives us what to my ear is a lovely intechild to return home with milk for break- gration of Frost's lessons about the heat As we learned from his earlier Mortal fast - while the poems that conclude the of death, of Williams's best eye for im- Acts, Mortal Words, Galway Kinnell is a book bring us to less concrete, more agery, and of James Wright's revelation moral poet as well as one of pragmatism evocative meditations on the relationship about the short moment between death mixed with vision...

...so is editorial work...

...Sharp seems to favor all pre-emptive war and the possibility of empower its people in advance of an at- three possibilities, depending on the exescalation...

...way, or one sees one dies, and other suggestions...

...which is next to nothing: I don't think I can keep on doing it Here I arrive there...