A Good Read
Poem reviewer, Dr. Sally Buckner
Dr. Sally Buckner has authored two poetry collections, Strawberry Harvest and Collateral
Damage, and edited two anthologies, including Word and Witness: 100 Years of North Carolina Poetry. After a long teaching career, she is
now Professor Emeritus at Peace College in Raleigh,
NC.
Review
This It’s good news indeed that Andre de Korvin’s third poetry collection will be
published this year. As in his
earlier collections—The Four
Hard Edges of War and Dreaming
Indigo Time—his newer work illustrates what Peter Farb said in his seminal study, Word Play: “[ the poet’s] skill is to find new
possibilities in the resources already in the language.”
A One-Winged Angel plumbs those resources
as deeply and thoroughly as any poems I can recall. Time and time again, de Korvin demonstrates Farb’s
description of the function of poetry:
“to depict the world with a fresh perception . . . so that we
will listen to language once again.”
Sometimes this is achieved through metaphor as in
“Breakdown”: “your
phone swinging off its hook,/ a metronome saying
no to harmony”; or in “Guilt”:”Those
long processions of days/ all dressed up in dark, awkward/ like employees
of a funeral home/ on their way to the burial of some wealthy client,/ all
of a sudden realizing/ they had lost their way.”
Even more frequently de Korvin
energizes our attention with surprising twists. “Guilt” begins,
“Traveling from village to city/ and city to village,/we sought other jails. . . . We ignored prisons that were not/
highly spoken of../We knew there was no need to go
through/ the formal procedure of an arrest../ We
could just walk in from the cold/ and exercise our right to be judged.”
We sought other
jails? Our right to be judged?
These terms confound our expectations, yet in a poem exploring how
we are sometimes obsessed with guilt, the lines ring with
authenticity. Later, when the judge
hands down his “strictest of sentences,” de Korvin
says, “We were all shook up,” and the echo of Elvis, singing of
romantic passion in the midst of this solemn analysis of one of our darker
moods jolts us—but not unpleasantly.
“The Sentence” has a nightmarish quality that
reminds us of Kafka’s short story, “The Trial.” The accused protagonist is seeking for
some kind of salvation: in language
(but “fog shrouded your stanzas”), in relationships (but
“you couldn't move people in and out of your life in rhythm with
changing times.”). I
won’t reveal the stunning ending except to say that suddenly the poet
uses sentence in a different
sense.
A character from Guy Owen’s
novel, The Ballad of the Flim-Flam Man, often
says, “He enlarged my life. A
fact.” I’ll be surprised
if you don’t find that A
One-Winged Angel enlarges your life.
Guilt
Traveling from village to city
and city to village,
we sought other jails.
We ignored prisons that were not
highly spoken of.
We knew there was no need to go
through
the formal procedure of an arrest.
We could just walk in from the
cold
and
exercise our right to be judged.
The judge would be there in a
matter of days
and on request hand out the strictest sentences.
We were all shook up inside,
you know what I mean?
We didn't ask for all of
what was happening to us.
It was all those crazy days,
small pieces of a puzzle
that never made sense.
Some of us sentenced themselves
to death by living
and others just sat there in limbo.
Those who died watched the living
wait for Monday, Tuesday, then
Wednesday
and then for Thursday, Friday and
Saturday and Sunday
so they could start again, at the
end of the week
to wait for Monday, Tuesday and so
on
you know what I mean?
Those long processions of days
all dressed up in dark, awkward
like employees of a funeral home
on their way to the burial of some
wealthy client,
all of a sudden realizing
they had lost their way.
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