Promised Lands

Book by Sacks, Peter

This is a baffling book. Sacks, a South African Jew who teaches in the United States, certainly has tales to tell about his homeland, his adopted country, and the Holy Land. And he's a technically accomplished poet, writing in a style reminiscent of Auden. Curiously, though, the spark is missing; he's like Auden without the wit, the bite. Imagery that should give the poems immediacy, a point of connection with the reader, instead appears as a complex overlay serving to distance us. Sacks offers a powerful portrait of a headmaster, moving poems about his parents, and, in several sequences, interesting correspondences of time and place: an angel at Los Alamos, a jet over Nazareth. In searching out his heritage he often connects biblical stories and places with his own life. But for all the care and obvious intelligence behind these poems, they seem academic.
- Kathleen Norris, Lemmon P.L., S.D.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.