{"id":31431,"date":"2010-12-29T07:52:45","date_gmt":"2010-12-29T12:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=31431"},"modified":"2015-05-12T07:06:01","modified_gmt":"2015-05-12T11:06:01","slug":"the-books-practical-gods-by-carl-dennis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=31431","title":{"rendered":"The Books: Practical Gods<\/i>, by Carl Dennis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daily Book Excerpt: Poetry<\/p>\n

The next book on my poetry shelf is winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, Practical Gods<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, by poet Carl Dennis. <\/p>\n

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“I don’t see myself as belonging to any particular school of poetry. Yeats was the most important early influence, but I hope that his presence is now very difficult to detect. Like him I’m interested in making my poems sound like actual speech, something that one might actually say out loud to a single listener. In Yeats’s day this meant avoiding poetical ornament and mechanical rhythms. Today it also means avoiding poetry that is either too private (concerned with the play of the writer’s own mind and not with an actual subject outside himself) or too public (not concerned with the particular context of speaker and listener in a dramatic situation).” – Carl Dennis<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Plain-speaking without being simplistic, emotional without being maudlin, philosophical and profound without being didactic – how does he do it? His poem from this collection “The God Who Loves You” (I posted it here<\/a>) is one of those poems that has actually helped<\/i> me get through some tough times. There aren’t too many of those, at least for me, and “The God Who Loves You” resonates such a deep powerful chord in me that I actually feel I have to stay away from it in better times. Because it might summon up the bad time. Mary Oliver has a couple of those poems too (“In Blackwater Woods<\/a>” being the main one) – poets who stir the deep<\/i>. Carl Dennis is unafraid of making pronouncements or giving advice (Oliver is the same way), but it never comes off as preachy or superior. It’s all wrapped up in the observations Dennis makes as a poet, many times very everyday observations, and so he feels confident in his point of view. It’s like Auden. His emotions were so fine-tuned that he had no problem in reaching out directly to a reader and saying, “Here. Here is how I think you should live” – which could be so obnoxious but manages to be welcome and cathartic. We need<\/i> poets for this. They say what we struggle to even think<\/i>. They (the good ones) can clear away the ballast and show you a clear vision. <\/p>\n

Dennis has been publishing since the 70s, eight volumes in all (or maybe more by now). I haven’t read as much of his work as I want to, and he is someone I pick up from time to time, usually in dark lonely moments. There’s always something for me there. He’s strangely comforting, without being too pat and simplistic. Dude is DEEP. <\/p>\n

Poet Sherry Robbins said of Practical Gods<\/i>, and I think this is just right: <\/p>\n

“[Practical Gods] invites the reader to pull up a chair and enjoy an intimate conversation on matters great and small.<\/p>\n

“The landscape is often our own familiar city, our own familiar lives. That’s why we can be so surprised, in mid-conversation, to find ourselves in deep water.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a collection filled with deities, as the title suggests. They stroll the planet, and we intersect with them without even knowing it. But they are there. It’s an amazing collection.<\/p>\n

He teaches at the University of Buffalo and has done so for years. <\/p>\n

Here’s a poem from the collection.<\/p>\n

Not the Idle<\/big><\/p>\n

It’s not the idle who move us but the few
\nOften confused with the idle, those who define
\nTheir project in life in terms so ample
\nThat nothing they ever do is a digression,
\nEach chapter contributing its own rare gift
\nAs a chapter in Moby Dick on squid or hard tack
\nIs just as important to Ishmael as a fight with a whale.
\nThe happy few who refuse to live for the plot’s sake.
\nMajor or minor, but for texture and tone and hue.
\nFor them weeding a garden all afternoon
\nCan’t be construed as a detour from the road of life.
\nThe road narrows to a garden path that turns
\nAnd circles to show that traveling goes only so far
\nAs a metaphor. The day rests on the grass.
\nAnd at night the books of these few,
\nLined up on their desks, don’t look like drinks
\nLined up on a bar to help them evade their troubles.
\nThey look like an escort of mountain guides
\nCome to conduct the climber to a lofty outlook
\nRising serene above the fog. For them the view
\nIs no digression though it won’t last long
\nAnd they won’t remember even the vivid details.
\nThe supper with friends back in the village
\nIn a dining room brightened with flowers and paintings
\nNo digression for them, though the talk leads
\nTo no breakthrough. The topic they happen to hit on
\nIsn’t a ferry to carry them over the interval
\nBetween soup and salad. It’s a raft drifting downstream
\nWhere the banks widen to embrace a lake
\nAnd birds rise from the reeds in many colors.
\nEveryone tries to name them and fails
\nFor an hour no one considers idle.<\/p>\n

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