William Henry Harrison and Other Poems

4/5 ( ratings)

The prodigiously imaginative mind and penetrating wit of David R. Slavitt are on full display in his newest collection of poetry that is perhaps his most engaging to date. The title poem begins by fooling around "With three names like that, it sounds as though his mother is calling him and she's really angry" but then builds into a shrewd, thoughtful account of the life of the ninth U.S. president. A second long poem offers a fresh and very amusing appraisal of the practice of buying, writing, and sending souvenir postcards. In between this pair, there are shorter pieces impressive in their range and tone and theme that dazzle in an already glittering body of work.Slavitt's poems can be playful, even silly, and then astonishingly convert levity into earnest urgency. Dark lines glint with the light of intelligence and mirth, even as artful puns and jokes reveal a rueful aspect. The poet gets older but his work is as graceful as ever, the lovable little boy signaling from inside the sometimes-cranky septuagenarian. Nothing has changed: the familiar street remains
what it was, a welter of random traffic, until
you position yourself at the corner beneath a sign and stare how can you not? the two or three blocks
of your field of vision to try to make out the white
roof of the bus that ought any minute to be appearing in the middle distance. That mere
looking imposes an order. The cars, the trucks,
the taxis are all not-bus, and the bus you want, withholding itself, teasing, defying, looms
in its invisibility larger than buses should.
So it can be with dawn, or the mailman, the waiter, or, for that matter, the heaven we dream of, waiting,
with its warmth and lights, bearing down through the distance and time
it and your yearning shape and almost tame.
"Bus"
About the Author:
David R. Slavitt is the author of eighteen volumes of original poetry, including Change of Address, Falling from Silence, and PS3569.L3. He has also translated poetry collections from Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has taught at Temple University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Bennington College. This is his eighty-third published book.