When these types of poems are put together, the synergistic effect can be quite remarkable. Who could imagine that the poets represented in this volume, for example—poets from radically different racial, ethnic, class, intellectual, and social backgrounds and traditions—could approach the same idea and do so with equal power but from notably different perspectives and using a wide variety of poetic techniques? For instance, what do the African American poet and playwright Ntozake Shange and the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda have in common aside from the fact that they artists of language? How is the meditative Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye a kindred spirit of the alcoholic poet and short-story writer, Raymond Carver? How are nature-loving Mary Oliver and William Stafford so similar to the people-loving Grace Paley? The answer is this: all eight of these poets pay exquisite, reverent attention not only to experience, but to the very power of words as an instrument of communication and connection. What makes this anthology so unique is that this common thread can run throughout such disparate poems from such completely diverse poets; all of whom are attempting almost entirely different subjects or ideas.
Some exquisite poems—the most exquisite ones, the kind that are collected here—demonstrate not just the ability of the writer to crystallize the product of the poem that conveys some ineffable feeling or sense of things, but to plainly delight in the process of making words. The reader, whether speaking the poem aloud or taking it in silently, feels that the rhythm, the meter, the way the words string together, all make sense. When this happens, when the writer expresses an unrestrained love of words themselves, as well as the experiences that words can convey and describe when they are used well, the reader’s senses and attention are wholly engaged. The love of words is transferred back and forth in reciprocation between the writer and the reader, and the reader realizes that something inside himself or herself has shifted for the better and may never quite be the same.
Such zeal for language is clearly evident from the earliest lines of the poem that opens this anthology. In Marilyn Krysl’s delightful and moving poem, “Saying Things,” the poet invites the reader to what she calls a “birthday party for the mouth” (l. 31). Krysl’s style is deceptively simple: she invites the reader to say a list of words that she has provided, words as diverse and seemingly unrelated as “asbestos” (l. 2) and “alewife,” (l. 7) as “cashmere” (l. 20), “Russian leather” (l. 29), and “Prussian blue” (l. 32). If the reader accepts the invitation and reads the poem aloud, “Saying Things” will take on its greatest significance and demonstrate Krysl’s careful yet seemingly effortless pairing of words. Separated by several lines, the alliteration and assonance of words works perfectly to remind the reader of how fun and how powerful words can be. Towards the conclusion of the poem, the poet prepares the reader for a lesson, but it is not overly didactic: “the word will take you along across the air of your head/so that you’re there as it settles into the thing it was made for….yours the mouth speaking the thing into existence” (ll. 34-35; 38).
William Stafford’s poem, “What in My Journal” may be a somewhat quieter and less riotous piece than Krysl’s “Saying Things,” but like Krysl, Stafford relies upon the use of a list to convey his love of language. The words “barbs” (l. 2) and “marbles” (l. 3) rub up against each other unexpectedly, so ordinary but so new in this combination. Stafford incorporates other word pairs that work similarly, disrupting familiar associations and calling us as readers to slow, to pause, to reflect on the sheer deliciousness of words: the hard “k” of “junkyard” (l. 4) crashing up against the “x” of “crucifixes” (l. 4). The poem is so compact at just 15 short lines, but it, like Stafford’s journal, has space enough “for/Alaska” (ll. 5-6). That’s just the size of space that Stafford opens up for the reader, too, a space so expansive and so wild that the reader can appreciate new scenes of language.
Ntozake Shange’s “Advice” is a very different kind of poem from those of Krysl and Stafford, or so it seems upon a first approach. Enter into the poem for a second or third reading, however, and it is clear that like Krysl and Stafford, Shange loves words and feels the urgency of conveying that love to her reader. The invitation is aggressive rather than inviting and exciting, and it demands the reader’s patience with respect to finding just the right pause. The line breaks are not always “natural,” a description that Shange herself would be likely to resist, and there is no punctuation; however, the reader who can work with Shange in a mutual love of language will be rewarded by the effort with lines such as “i am a poet/i write poems/i make words/cartwheel & somersault down pages” (ll. 5-6). She commands the reader to pay attention to words and their value, “so you will all haveta come together/just to figure out/how you got so far away/so far away from words….” (ll. 42-43).
