February 28, 2006

Rosalie Moore, The Grasshopper's Man (Yale UP, 1949). 66 pages.

I came across this via the Neglectorino Project. Moore's The Grasshopper's Man was first on CA Conrad's list of neglected poets, so I reckon she factored a bit into the impetus of the project overall. As luck would have it, she donated a signed copy of the book to the library I work for. Substantiating the neglected claim is the fact that this book hasn't been checked out since November 28, 1955. The only other Moore book in the collection, Of Singles and Doubles (Woolmer/Brotherson, 1979), has only been checked out once, and then by a faculty member.

How is this the first time I'm hearing of the Activist School and Lawrence Hart? I've ordered Hart's Idea of Order in Experimental Poetry through Interlibrary Loan to check this whole thing out.

But to return to our sheep, most of these poems read fresh.

The drops starting like tacks.
Bull-snorting umbrellas
Refuse rain. Hair
Breaks at the roots to lightning --
"I can see
How hard it is, how very hard it is
To live in this climate" (Parade with Piccolos, p. 53, ll.1-7).

Throughout the poems, there is a sense of the motion of augmentation, everything within the poem seems to be building upon itself; take for example the repetition of "more" and the repetition of structure in "Timepiece" (49).

The fact that this is neglected, and seemingly so soon (the Beat explosion in the Bay Area didn't help), is unfortunate, as the work still stands after so many years. The fact that Auden chose it for the Yale Series of Younger Poets is strangely making me rethink Auden.

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Imagine the "I can see" line being at least two tabs in. I need to bone up on my html skills.