Tim McNulty's poetry, in many instances, has a kind of haiku purity I find very attractive. No ornamentation, no fanciful poet-making-metaphor surges. Clear and precise language.
Here's a short poem titled "Frost" in its entirety – I am sure the lineation will get all out of whack.
August blueberries, arctic cranberries,
gathered in a wooden bowl
(whole bushes uprooted where the bears
have been, branches sucked to the pith).
Already in the low carpet of tundra
a slight shift in color:
deep greens fading some,
faint tinges of red among the huckleberry
and fireweed,
and the lowest leaves of the dwarf willow
yellowing
like the pages of an old book
left out too long in a shed
unread:
this from a single frost.
The language is slow and hypnotically lush, and except for “carpet" and the “old book”, nicely emptied out of simile and metaphor. I can imagine this is descriptive but boring to some readers. I am predisposed to liking it via the Chinese and Japanese classics, though, how the poem's energy and attention deepen along the way through this accumulation of descriptive detail without epiphanies, meditative lurches and outtakes, etc., until that last line: this from a single frost - an unforced observation that has real weight to me.
3 comments:
Ach. I really admire the clarity and sparseness here. I've added him to my list of folk to hunt down and read.
Blue Mountain Dusk is the book I own, the one I took this poem from as well.
Yes, it is sparse and patient. Reading haiku and the great Chinese poets has taught me to at least try, like this poem does, to present nature without ornament or comment (or much comment anyway) - to be more of a representative, someone who quietly points, rather than a spokesperson. All this, by the way, blows up in my face when I think I want to write poems like Mary Ruefle.
Speaking of ornament, the image of hot naughty Bly still cracks me up. Though I have now put the zither in his hands.
I understand the impulse to just "quietly point" in poems--it's becoming a stronger and stronger draw for me.
I need to pull Ruefle out and give her another chance. Other people have told me they're surprised I don't respond more warmly.
Oy...I'm glad I finished my turkey baloney sammich before I read about hot naughty Bly avec zither. Zut alors, that could give a boy nightmares.
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