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 Reviewed by: The Rev 5th Jul 2000 
 


Study for the World's Body

David St. John

There are a handful of poets who are capable, time after time and with seeming effortlessnes, to make me wonder why it is I ever decided to take up poetry as a discipline. Hayden Carruth, of course, the finest living American poet. Ira Sadoff. Debra Alberry. And now, I've been introduced to a new one-- David St. John.

It was probably pure luck more than anything that led to St. John's Study for the World's Body, a 1994-published new-and-selected kinda thing, to be sitting on the almost-destroyed poetry table at the Case Western book sale a couple of weeks back amid the Schutz and McKuen that no one is ever willing to be seen purchasing. I picked it up somply because it had been so long since I bought any poetry at all, really, and I've re-read the greats so many times now that often I'll get snatches of Carruth stuck in my head like bubblegum pop. I had some reservations-- wouldn't you, if it were left with McKuen and Schutz?-- but hey, at five bucks a box, I was willing to take the chance.

A few days later, I flipped the book open and read the first poem. By the end of it, I was hooked:

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...You close the window, & for the night's affair slip on the gloves Sewn of the delicate Hides of mice. They are like the redemption Of a drastic weather: your boat Put too soon out to sea, Come back. Like the last testimony, & trace of desire. Or, how your blouse considers your breasts, How your lips preface your tongue, & how a man Assigns a silence to his words....

(From "Slow Dance")

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Three absolutely glorious pages of such imagery so brilliantly worded. And you know what? It stays that good, from those earlier poems published in 1976 all the way up to the very last poem in the book. A hundred forty-two pages of fine, fine poetry.

At the end of St. John's gorgeous tribute to Pasolini, he gives us this image:

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...The boy dragged an old toy Dragon behind him on a short gold cord, Its mouth spitting little friction sparks of joy--

He circled the countain like a tiny Chinese lord, Secure in his wild love for the dragon, Its steady metallic pulse all any of us heard.

His mother called out to him, as did her "friend"; Yet they, like the world, were triumphantly ignored. Ah, I thought, to be /that/ powerful! To have again,

As a boy, a dragon on a leash! And to be heard In one's own pure defiant silence...

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And that's exactly what this book is-- a dragon on a leash. I cannot recommend it highly enough. **** 1/2



See also
For Georg Trakl by David St. John reviewed by The Rev
From Snow and Rock, from Chaos by Hayden Carruth reviewed by The Rev
If You Call This Cry a Song by Hayden Carruth reviewed by The Rev
North Winter by Hayden Carruth reviewed by The Rev
The Bloomingdale Papers by Hayden Carruth reviewed by The Rev
The Sleeping Beauty by Hayden Carruth reviewed by The Rev
A Northern Calendar by Ira Sadoff reviewed by The Rev
Emotional Traffic by Ira Sadoff reviewed by The Rev
Palm Reading in Winter by Ira Sadoff reviewed by The Rev