In this it resembles all the old thinking. . . . The others kept to a beautiful stillness. H ASS'S newest volume, Sun Under Wood , reaches deeper below the surface of his talent, but it continues the trend as a volume that primarily bears witness, that does not altogether participate. It looks as though once he consented to penetrate a personal past, he was unable to free his language to move beyond a merely personal relevance. He all but apologizes.
Private pain is easy, in a way.
It doesn't go away, but you can teach yourself to see its size. Invent a ritual. Walk up a mountain in the afternoon, gather up pine twigs. Light a fire, thin smoke, not an ambitious fire, and sit before it and watch it till it burns to ash and the last gleam is gone from it, and dark falls. Then you get up, brush yourself off, and walk back to the world.