Orphics

Leonard Kress

Kent State's Witt Poetry Chapbook Series is quite a wonderful thing, really. I've yet to find an entry that disappoints, and Leonard Kress' Orphics continues the trend. Short, sweet, and filled with, not surprisingly, orphics, all of which revolve around, not surprisingly, Orpheus. (He does attempt a pindaric at one point, and succeeds rather well, for being Orpheus and not Pindar.)

Kress takes the point of view of Orpheus transported to modern America, and achieves the expected mix of the modern and archaic in doing so, along with a subtle, understated "what changes time hath wrought" feel that runs through the short series of poems. The language is quite nicely done; it's more form than author wordiness that allows the critic to say the work could use a little tightening.

"Here among the just-shorn lambs, helpless, pathetic and shy, I bask on a cool creek rock, uncoiled like a snake, straight as a crook some shirtless sheepfoul boy might misplace..." (--"An Orphic Version of the Pastoral")

Like all the other books in the Witt series I've reviewed to date, Orphics is worth picking up (or at least a look-through at the library, if the idea of spending six bucks on a twenty-four page book makes you wince).