Days We Would Rather Know: Poems
by Michael Blumenthal
Category: Poetry

Now back in print after more than 20 years, Michael Blumenthal's Days We Would Rather Know, originally published by Viking-Penguin and sold out in both its original printings, was one of the most admired, and most influential, books of American poetry of the l980s, and marked the auspicious continuation of one of the decade's most promising debuts. Of Michael Blumenthal's first book, Sympathetic Magic, Howard Nemerov said, "The last first book I remember as having this strangeness and distinction was called Harmonium." That comparison to the work of Wallace Stevens was, if anything, more apt in the case of this astonishing second collection, a collection that helped establish Mr. Blumenthal as a master of language in his own right. He worked his brand of magic with unforgettable imagery ("When your wife uttered your son like a large syllable into this world"), a lambent humor ("I wish Robert Rauschenberg would take back his bathtub and his floating goat"), and a playful eroticism ("My mouth puddles with bourbon and the taste of your thighs"). He revealed a sensibility that conflates the present with the past, irreverently aligning psychiatrists, baseball, and word processor courses alongside Odysseus, Rapunzel, and Rembrandt, and that lavishes on its subjects a vigorous and refreshing sensuality. While different in scope, subject, and style, these seventy poems all body forth a central theme: that-as reality is dissatisfying and satisfaction elusive-hope is in itself an antidote, and possibility is always invigorating. "Love is rarely as exciting as the wish for love," writes Blumenthal; Days We Would Rather Know suggests that we are as fulfilled, as animated, by our longing as by the resolution of those wishes.