Reviews
This fifth collection by Blasing ( Double House of Life ) is a tender venture into the art of remembering. What gives the strongest poems gravity is not so much the writer's lyrical care in recalling the past, but the interplay these memories are allowed in the present: "Just as the stories that my father told / let him round off his life . . . / the tales I spin this way bring me full circle." Many of the poems are tales--reverent ballads that cover everything from Blasing's midwestern childhood to his travels in Europe and Turkey. In the long, ambitious poem "Hymn to the Sun," Blasing is "tracing each thread" that "ties" him to the "farthest star," searching, recollecting and (always) writing with a sharp eye for the concentrated image. Perplexingly, in the rest of the collection Blasing emphasizes what is remembered, rather than how it is remembered. In a single poem, one finds him grounding his memories in such references as Hershey bars, Welch's grape juice and Wonder Bread--an effect that doesn't crystallize as much as it clutters.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Blasing's fifth book of poetry shows a mature talent with a firm sense of craft. Turning his vision to the source of poetry in childhood, he explores the moments, inscribed in memory, that reveal connections between the individual and his world. Deceptively simple, the poems reveal their craft subtly, without fanfare. But they are tight, controlled, precisely executed. "You have to find / your own way," his baseball idol told him when he was 12, and so he has made "a virtue / of necessity, which, like rules, / freed me to play the game I'd choose." A fine, strong book. Pat Monaghan
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Seller: Housing Works Online Bookstore, New York, NY, U.S.A.
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Condition: Very Good. Minimal wear to cover. Pages clean and binding tight. shelf wear. bumped edges. Paperback. Seller Inventory # HT2-02990