Welcome to Litsy!

In his poetry, Hass remembers other poets (Eugenio Montale) meditates on death in various stages in life (childhood, youth, middle age), describes nature in detail, reflects on history.
“All you have to do is say the words for some imagined others in a world of words, a lull of world and words that make a world, or makes a seeing in the dark as sheet lightning does, sometimes, at night, in summer fields.”

A new collection by the former Poet Laureate and Pulitzer prize winner. As he ages, of course, he looks back, recalling a lot of people who have passed on (there are so many mentions of people who are dead now), contemplating loss and beauty. Some of the political poems are the strongest in the collection, including a lovely poem about his experience at a peace conference in Korea and a protest at a military complex.

Finished Summer Snow at the beach. It just wasn‘t for me. It‘s easy to see how talented Hass is, but his blatantly political poems in the latter half of the book bored me. The nature poems near the front were better, but the author has a fixation with death, and that can be too much for me. It took me several days to finish a 152 page book. I also finished Foxglove Summer on the way back; it‘s still good.

Tonight‘s reading. I‘ve read more poetry in the last 2 years than I‘ve read in all the years since grad school in English and I got my degree in 1983.