{"id":284602,"date":"2017-11-29T16:41:22","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T21:41:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=284602"},"modified":"2018-05-09T09:06:59","modified_gmt":"2018-05-09T13:06:59","slug":"poet-james-longenbach-unites-spare-and-spooky-in-earthling-284602","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/poet-james-longenbach-unites-spare-and-spooky-in-earthling-284602\/","title":{"rendered":"Poet James Longenbach unites spare and spooky in Earthling<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earthling<\/em>, the newest book of poetry by James Longenbach<\/a>, the Joseph H. Gilmore Professor of English, had its roots in a poem he wrote called \u201cPastoral.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard something in it that sounded fresh to me,\u201d he says, a different tone than in his previous poetry collection, The Iron Key<\/em> (W. W. Norton, 2010). \u201cIt seemed to be talking about ordinary things, but in a way that made them seem at the same time kind of spectral or otherworldly. There was also the capacity for wry humor in that tone\u2014and all of that seemed exciting to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Written first, \u201cPastoral\u201d ultimately became the final poem of Earthling<\/em>, the poet and literary critic\u2019s fifth poetry collection. \u00a0The tone drove the book\u2019s development, and the collection\u2019s overarching narrative isn\u2019t one of events, \u201cbut of feeling or spiritual development,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\"James
James Longenbach.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Publishers Weekly<\/em> calls the book, which was published this fall by W. W. Norton, \u201ca moving case for love\u2019s power to sustain us.\u201d Earthling<\/em> moves constantly between the mundane and the mystical as it contemplates mortality, giving voice to a range of emotions that knowledge of life\u2019s finiteness can create.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s shifting viewpoints are exemplified perhaps nowhere more dramatically than in \u201cThe Crocodile,\u201d a poem that playfully considers the perspective of that creature. But the whimsy also offers Longenbach an opportunity to reflect on his own mother\u2019s death\u2014an experience that, despite his efforts, had found no home in his poetry before.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t remember quite how it happened. I just got the idea of using this fanciful trope of the speaking crocodile as a way to get at the reality of this confrontation with mortality,\u201d he says. The lines in the poem\u2019s fourth section are plain and terse:<\/p>\n

When my mother died,<\/p>\n

I was right beside her.<\/p>\n

She\u2019d been unconscious for a day.<\/p>\n

My sister and my father were there, too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to get more flatly clear and straightforward in language than that,\u201d he says, and hopes that what is evoked is also \u201cspooky and revelatory.\u201d He brings together the flatness of his language with the conceit of the crocodile as he ends the section:<\/p>\n

Then, immediately, the color left her face,<\/p>\n

She was no longer in her body,<\/p>\n

And she sank beneath the lagoon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cAll I\u2019m ever trying to do is to be scrupulously and absolutely clear about what I\u2019m saying,\u201d Longenbach says. \u201cIt\u2019s become a discipline to me that has taken my poems to their strangest places, because trying to be very clear about things is a difficult, dangerous, and unsettling practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Listen to James Longenbach read his poetry<\/em><\/h3>\n

Huntington Meadow<\/strong><\/em>
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