HOMESPUN OF OATMEAL GRAY

by Paul Goodman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 23, 1970

The ""I"" in Goodman's poems is no lyrical abstraction but the man himself, afflicted with politics but bravely scrapping, immersed in a noble but dying tradition, variously loving, suffering, celebrating, praying. He sees himself whole and has considerable esteem for the vision; but it is an egotism very like Whitman's (in this case embarrassed by a live presence and tilted off a poetic center by the urgency of his involvements) in which self is the starting point of all affirmation. Whether it makes for good poetry is largely a matter of readers' esthetics -- it's debatable whether the no-longer-shocking eroticism is kept up in self-indulgence or in pursuance of further, more durable meaning; whether all the political statements, Goodman style, are really very poetic. But the confrontations are real and often of a religious intensity (""Creator spirit come, by whom/ I say that which is real,/ nor has this way of being/ failed to save me alive"") and the intelligence is true to its difficult priorities (""I willingly work with true propositions/ to hack like wood, I don't like clay""). Poems about his dead son Matt are harrowing on any terms, and the humbling effects of that loss are evident throughout in prayers and reappraisals (""My liaison/ is lost. Now they are right to call me senile""). But there are lyrical moments that do transcend the poet's personality, and these are transcendent indeed: ""The sun for Adam/ spanned twenty degrees of arc/ a minute away,/ he stood in the gale/ of the corona without/ intermedium. . ."" -- ecstatic immersion that is the presumable goal of Goodman's politics and life.

Pub Date: Nov. 23, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION