"What Sustains the beautiful is loss"
Is this true? This remarkable sentence is to be found in Louise Gluck's introduction to a much praised book of poems by Spencer Reece, called The Clerk's Tale (Houghton Mifflin, 2004). It is sort of characteristic of the book, which is everywhere overmuch.
The title poem was published in the New Yorker a while back, with a page all to itself, which gave this poem, poet and book a lot to live up to. The title poem is likeable in some sense, but also repelling in another, the sense of detail is both wonderful, funny, but also somewhat lurkingly patronizing, or even self patronizing. Many of the poems are a little too that. Annie Dillard in a blurb, says that these poems "will exhalt you." There is a lot of talk in the introduction about 'studied attention to detail" and a "profound" sense of loss. Now, there certainly is a lushness to the poems, but it is a lushness of emotion that is way to over the top. There is not a real lushness of language, what is lacking is a trust in language, lacking in the poet and in the introducer in regard to the poems. All of which is not to say that there are some very very effective poems in the book, mostly in the less personal, less over-determined of the poems, which are the ones in series, especially those entitled ghazals. Luckily, this is a good portion of the book. A strange and bizarre production all around, including the cover reproduction of an amazingly pale, elegant young man, a portrait by Sargeant of one W. Graham Norton, which of course, continues to overdeterimine how one might read these poems.
The title poem was published in the New Yorker a while back, with a page all to itself, which gave this poem, poet and book a lot to live up to. The title poem is likeable in some sense, but also repelling in another, the sense of detail is both wonderful, funny, but also somewhat lurkingly patronizing, or even self patronizing. Many of the poems are a little too that. Annie Dillard in a blurb, says that these poems "will exhalt you." There is a lot of talk in the introduction about 'studied attention to detail" and a "profound" sense of loss. Now, there certainly is a lushness to the poems, but it is a lushness of emotion that is way to over the top. There is not a real lushness of language, what is lacking is a trust in language, lacking in the poet and in the introducer in regard to the poems. All of which is not to say that there are some very very effective poems in the book, mostly in the less personal, less over-determined of the poems, which are the ones in series, especially those entitled ghazals. Luckily, this is a good portion of the book. A strange and bizarre production all around, including the cover reproduction of an amazingly pale, elegant young man, a portrait by Sargeant of one W. Graham Norton, which of course, continues to overdeterimine how one might read these poems.
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