Basic HTML Version
ADLER/JEWISH POETRY’S QUANTUM LEAP
25
rhetoric, Pinsky walks the high wire between fictive and sacred;
in many poems, becoming the self-appointed seer. “The Hearts”
is a tou r de force that describes the existential dilemma o f spir
itual estrangement:
To Buddha every distinct thing is illusion
And becoming is destruction, but still we sing
In the shower. I do. In the beginning God drenched
The Emptiness with images . . .
(“The Hearts”)
By jux taposing a 1957 recording o f Lee Andrews and The
Hearts with visions o f seraphim, “the holy,” and the mystic d i
chotomy o f self-identity, Pinsky skillfully makes his point by as
suming the vantage o f the beholder. This stylistic invention p e r
mits him to distance himself from the num inous, to avoid the
pitfalls o f introspective poetry: self-indulgence, overstatement,
and overreaction.
One o f the most powerful pieces in the collection is a long
prose poem, “Jesus and Isolt,” that grapples with the dualism
o f Judeo-Christian morality by presenting the Christ figure in
the form o f a “ciclogriff,” who visits legendary heroine Isolt
and her warrior lover Tristam . On the Earth plane, he witnesses
first-hand, the absolution o f mortal sin by translation o f gore
into the jewelled artifice o f balladic poetry. Doubletalk, blasphe
my, indifference, and uncontrollable biological drives are ulti
mately the downfall o f nothing and no one, concludes Pinsky,
as the defeated seer-ciclogriff re tu rns to the palace o f God’s
holy angels, defeated in his efforts to save the lovers from dam
nation. Further, concludes the poet, if we choose to be physical
beings and bypass cosmic connectedness, if we opt for ar t and
the senses, sensuality, we must pay the consequences by sacri
ficing spiritual consummation.
In
A Walk with Tom Jefferson,
Philip Levine asks:
Why am I so quiet?
This is the end of the world, I am dreaming the
end of the world, and I go from bed
to bed bowing to the small damp heads
of my sons in a bedroom that turns
slowly from darkness to fire. Everyone
else is gone, their last words reach us in the
language of light.
(“Waking in March”)