Should I refrain from posting a review of a poetry collection today, out of my horror and anxiety about the events in Boston? Or should I admit that the more days I’m alive, and the worse things get, the more I depend on the poems of James Tate? We read from his later selected poems, Eternal Ones of the Dream (Ecco, 2012), last night in the kitchen. I remember him reading Frost and Whitman to our poetry workshop at UMass, and last night so many of his poems seemed to echo “Directive,” to respond to the sixth section of “Song of Myself.” I suppose that’s another way of saying they are poems I believe in. Here is one of them, which you can hear Tate read via the Poetry Society of America:
Map of the Lost World
Things were getting to me, things of no
consequence in themselves, but, taken together,
they were undermining my ability to cope. I needed
a hammer to nail something up, but my hammer wasn’t
in the toolbox. It wasn’t anywhere to be found.
I broke a dish while putting away the dishes, but
where’s the broom? Not in the broom closet. How do
you lose a broom? Where was it hiding? And, then,
later, while making the bed, I found the hammer.
Perhaps it was used as a sleeping-aid device. Then
Kelly called and said she had lost her ring last night
and would I please look under the bed. I looked and
found the broom there. So I decided to sweep under
there to see if I could find her ring. I swept out
a rosary, a spark plug, a snakeskin—three feet long—
a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order, a swizzle stick,
a jawbreaker, and much more. But no ring. I put the
broom into the broom closet, and started to feel a little
better. I hung the picture and put the hammer into
the toolbox. I made myself a cup of tea, and sat down
in the living room. I had no idea how any of that
stuff could have gotten under my bed. None of it
belonged to me. It was quite a disturbing assortment.
Then I thought of Kelly’s ring, and how it could have
fallen behind one of the cushions on the couch. I
drank some tea to calm my nerves. The stuff under
the bed could be the residue of dreams. I drank some
more tea. Then I lifted the first cushion. There
was about three dollars’ worth of change and a monkey
carved out of teak. I didn’t like the monkey at all,
but I was happy to have the three dollars. Under the
next cushion there was a small glass hand, a lead soldier
in a gas mask, a key ring with three keys, and a map of
Frankfurt, Germany. I sipped my tea. My hands were
shaking. The whole morning was frittering away with
nonsense. I had work to do, or, if not that, then I
should be relaxing. I wasn’t going to look for Kelly’s ring
anymore at all. I sat there without moving, my mind
drifting over the clouds. I was pulling a yak over
a mountaintop, hauling water and rice to a dead wise man,
who knows nothing, says nothing.