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Writing about what I have been reading and encountering in the media. |
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WELCOME TO MY BLOG! I comment on things I am reading, thinking about, encountering in media, and spiritual issues. I hope you will find something interesting. PS. I love feedback... |
| BOOK Jackson, Richard and Robert Vivian, Traversings, Anchor and Plume, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 2016. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to write creatively back and forth with someone for a year or so, not sharing news, but just sending each other poetic ruminations. Richard Jackson and Robert Vivian did just that and turned it into a book. They are quite different from each other. Richard Jackson sees concrete details around him and wonders about the nature of these things. He gives voice to his environment in a way that helps the reader attach to the experience R. Jackson describes. Robert Vivian writes more often from somewhere in the spiritual realm or the realm of imagination. The reader gets to sail in whatever direction R. Vivian has chosen for himself. Despite these differences, the work, which consists of pages alternating between the two writers, has them clearly playing off each other, taking the core idea or image from the previous work of the other. Richard Jackson gives agency to nature: "The early mountain snow creates a fresh canvas where each creature will write its own new story." Later in the same piece, "Our words are probes that will never reach that receding edge of stardust, but we write them anyway, not to escape whatever fearful stories the snow will record, but because, like the mockingbird flinging itself again and again against the glass of this invisible window, we want to believe there's another world beyond the frayed edges of this one." and it is quite true that I want to believe in the world described by these two creative men in their distinct ways. Reading the book makes this possible. Robert Vivian responds to the quote above: "How many ache and never find home but look for it in a string of words, a hum or melody, a moan that would be king or queen in the valley of the little birds." These prose poems celebrate the life of communication, of thriving in words that bring the reader a world that sings, that thrives, and invests in our happiness without even trying. I loved this book and read it slowly, going back over each few pages before moving ahead. I have been a fan of Richard Jackson for some time and always read his work this way. This is my first extended exposure to Robert Vivian. The reading and re-reading approach works equally well with his writing style. I encourage you to read this, or anything by these gifted artists. |
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