ED CODISH

An expansive collection of work from poet Codish’s career of nearly four decades.

This selection of works, edited by composer, retired professor, and debut editor Horenstein, opens with “Voyage to Gaza,” a lengthy, semiautobiographical, and wide-ranging sonnet sequence that runs the gamut from referencing Noah in the Old Testament to providing humorous, off-color plays on words: “when Haephestus bangs his forge or wife / so sparks or spasms flare and thunder quakes.” Later love poems, often directly addressed to the poet’s wife, Susann, are deeply personal but written with an eye toward more universal, endearing aspects of love: “We are grown-ups now / not adults, never that; / we play in grown-up clothes / and play gets real, but skin / stays soft.” While describing his “Pigeon Poems” in an introduction, Codish remarks that they were written at a time when “My only contact with the natural world was what I could see out the window.” And indeed, in these poems, the lowly pigeon is a constant reminder of beauty and fragility in the world; sometimes the works have a haikulike precision, and other times the works ruminate more loosely and broadly on nature. Elsewhere, of the influence of Chinese verse on his own work, Codish writes that “enlightenment occurs suddenly rather than after decades of concentration.” His own poems playfully use the concept of dragons to explore not only Chinese mythology, but also such matters as NASA’s ongoing explorations and discovery of a “dragon aurora,” effectively highlighting the playful sense of curiosity that permeates the collection as a whole. An editor’s note provides a succinct overview of Codish’s career and legacy as a major poet, noting, in particular, the poet’s serious works on the subjects of Israel and Judaism and the fact that he “never loses sight of life’s amusing absurdities.”

A well-organized and impressive celebratory compilation.