Part of the Story

Richard Jackson

After reading Jackson's The Dismantling of Time in Contemporary Poetry, I decided I'd go on the lookout for his own books of poems. What it was about Dismantling that made me think Jackson's work would be cold and clinical, I have no idea; whatever it was, I was quite wrong. Jackson is a nature poet a la Hayden Carruth, and to date the only one I've read who can hold a candle to the old man and not dull in comparison.

The bulk of Jackson's book is comprised of simple pieces about the world around us and how it relates to us, done with excellent images and a fine sense of sound:

Child, in the hills north of here
the wind whispers the story of these things.
The hawk drops like a stone from the cliff.
The hunter's fire blinks and disappears.
Even now our owl rips
the seams of darkness, and is gone to chart
his way by starflowers to those hills.
("In a Season of Damaged Nights")

The book does stumble on a couple of poems towards the end about Jackson's wife leaving him, but even then, for the most part they're rooted in image and only wander off into vague value-judgment territory for a few lines here and there. Thankfully, he gets back on track quickly, and gives us more like the above. A fine piece of work from a sadly neglected author.