内容简介
THE GREAT WAVE, Slate's follow-up collection to THE INCENTIVEOF THE MAGGOT, is a more personal performance than his much laudedand talked about debut book, which was nominated for the NationalBook Critics Circle Award, the Academy of American Poets LenoreMarshall Prize, and was the winner of the prestigious Larry LevisPoetry Prize. While Slate's first book burst forth from atwenty-year period of silence, THE GREAT WAVE bears the mark of afinely honed fluency and makes good his exceptional promise. WhileSlate occasionally returns to his experience as an internationalbusinessman ("Meeting in Madrid", "Samba de Orfeo", and "Reunion"),his most powerful and moving poems revivify childhood memories('Four Roses") or address the condition of his elderly parents("December First, Terminal"). One of the most haunting and poignantpoems recounts the tragedy of the 1942 Coconut Grove fire in whichSlate's fraternal grandmother died "with her sister in the ladies'room." Of this event, Slate writes, "My life began with the fire, /glimmering in the birth waters. / Beyond my bedroom wall/voicesmurmured a memory." "Coconut Grove" is one of several poems thatmention historical catastrophes such as fires and floods and theseallusions shock us with recognition of our own perilous and tenuousand terror-ridden times. Everywhere, the collection displaysSlate's sly and signature wit as in a marvelously humorous andhistorically accurate "Khrushchev's Foot," in which Slate remindsus of the time Khrushchev slammed his shoe in anger on a desk atthe UN. Out of this event, he imagines, "Such a delicate foot,veined and moist--/it makes me want to reveal a secret, / anexpendable on, declassified." Reading THE GREAT WAVE, we arereminded that the purpose of poetry is to confront the urgencies ofthe present by remembering and reinventing the past.