The Grace of Necessity (Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series)
*Starred Review* Few poets seem to live their poetry as much as Green does. This book’s second part, “Daily Practice, 2001–2002,” impressively showcases this aspect of his work. Each poem in it records something from the day that is its title, from the dragonfly on a branch of “Aug. 26” (“a minor thing / until the sun . . . pours itself through / a single tilted wing”) to the falling plums impossible not to see as an allusion of “Sept. 11” to the dance of housecleaning of “April 27” and “the unexpected groan of lovers” of “June 12.” Green perhaps states the key to his astonishingly universal personal poetry in the opening of “June 19”: “One secret is to want / what the world is.” Despite the pain and loss the world inflicts—the book’s first part is full of elegies, for animals and qualities of character (see “Teaching My Son to Kill”), for the deaths and long sufferings of poets and others—Green wants the world. After all, it has its pleasures, too: read the love poems of part 3, whose title, “The Only Time We Have,” is another expression of acceptance. Poetry of Frostian resonance and depth. --Ray Olson--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.