[New-Poetry] 2008 Books of note

[jforjames at aol.com]

If you don't have many of the previous 6 collections of Linda Gregg's work
(Too Bright to See, Alma, The Sacraments of Desire, Chosen by the Lion, Things & Flesh, In the Middle Distance) 
then this pick is practically preordained: All of it Singing (Graywolf 2008) has a healthy selection of the
prior books plus a raft of new poems.

Here's one I like. Certainly an echo of James Wright's "A Blessing" to it, but moe than that it shows the influence
of a fellow Californian, Robinson Jeffers--


The Weight


Two horses were put together in the same paddock.

Night and day. In the night and in the day

wet from heat and the chill of the wind

on it. Muzzle to water, snorting, head swinging

and the taste of bay in the shadowed air.

The dignity of being. They slept that way,

knowing each other always.

Withers quivering for a moment,

fetlock and the proud rise at the base of the tail,

width of back. The volume of them, and each other’s weight.

Fences were nothing compared to that.

People were nothing. They slept standing,

their throats curved against the other’s rump.

They breathed against each other,

whinnied and stomped.

There are things they did that I do not know.

The privacy of them had a river in it.

Had our universe in it. And the way

its border looks back at us with its light.

This was finally their freedom.

The freedom an oak tree knows.

That is built at night by stars.

 

--Linda Gregg, Chosen 
by the Lion (Graywolf Press, 1994)  

--
Finnegan
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