Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest: Poems
*Starred Review* The epigraph to Fairchild's book of poems of memory is by the greatest American prose poet, James Agee, for whom memory was the very stuff of life. The passage is from "Knoxville: Summer of 1915," which Samuel Barber set for soprano and orchestra and which Agee later used to open his novelA Death in the Family. To his immense credit, Fairchild lives up to the exquisite, delicious, nocturnal texture of Barber's music and Agee's language in the narrative and reflective contents of this strong, compelling collection. In lusciously long story poems, especially the 28-page, autobiographical "The Blue Buick," he infers, much like Augustine (see Garry Wills'Saint Augustine's Memory [BKL O 15 02]), that we create and re-create ourselves out of our own and others' memories. "Rave On," another autobiographical narrative that attests to the long-term re-formation of one of his teen cronies, who egged the others into flipping a car for the thrill of it--just about the biggest thrill to be had in that part of 1950s Kansas just above the Oklahoma Panhandle, known as No Man's Land--makes the same point, no less movingly. If strong emotion courses through Fairchild's work, it never makes it lachrymose, thanks to concrete vocabulary and images, direct syntax, and propulsive rhythms. Poetry book of the year?Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved