Natural History: Poems

ISBN-13: 9780375711152 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 88 str.

Dan Chiasson

Opis

Dan Chiasson, hailed as -one of the most gifted poets of his generation- upon the appearance of his first book, takes inspiration for his stunning new collection from the Historia Naturalis of Pliny the Elder.
-What happens next, you won't believe, - Chiasson writes in -From the Life of Gorky, - and it is fair warning. This collection suggests that a person is like a world, full of mysteries and wonders-and equally in need of an encyclopedia, a compendium of everything known. The long title sequence offers entries such as -The Sun- (-There is one mind in all of us, one soul, / who parches the soil in some nations / but in others hides perpetually behind a veil-), -The Elephant- (-How to explain my heroic courtesy?-), -The Pigeon- (-Once startled, you shall feel hours of weird sadness / afterwards-), and -Randall Jarrell- (-If language hurts you, make the damage real-). The mysteriously emotional individual poems coalesce as a group to suggest that our natural world is populated not just by fascinating creatures-who, in any case, are metaphors for the human as Chiasson considers them- but also by literature, by the ghosts of past poetries, by our personal ghosts. Toward the end of the sequence, one poem asks simply, -Which Species on Earth Is Saddest?- a question this book seems poised to answer. But Chiasson is not finally defeated by the sorrows and disappointments that maturity brings. Combining a classic, often heartbreaking musical line with a playful, fresh attack on the standard materials of poetry, he makes even our sadness beguiling and beautiful. From the Hardcover edition.