Cover to Cover

Reviewed in this issue:

By Charles Simic
Harcourt, 2003

The speakers in Charles Simic's poetry are often bewildered by large, existential questions: who or what lies behind all this life, and what lies beyond it? Nothing is there, the poet answers, although not without the wry humor that has become a trademark: "there are tasty little zeros/In the peanut dish tonight," he writes in "Autumn Sky" (2003). But Simic, a UNH professor of English and a Pulitzer Prize winner, writes about nothing in such a brilliant and affecting voice that it's oddly seductive.

Recently named a finalist for the National Book Award, Simic's latest volume is a major collection of 19 new poems, and much of his best work from the past two decades. In it, images of empty buildings and streets, of bare trees, of dust, darkness and death abound. If there are people in his poetry, there is miscommunication, and isolation. For example, in the new poem "Separate Truths," a couple attempts to communicate their confusion: "We'll have to run for it, I said,/And had no idea what I meant./The coming of the inevitable,/What a strange bliss that is,/And I had no idea what she meant."

It's all a maddening mystery, Simic asserts, so why do we worry ourselves with it? It is the human plight to grapple with unanswerable questions, he suggests. His poetry is concerned with the unrelenting mystery of the everyday, the nothing behind what we have created to fill time. In the new poem, "Something Large is in the Woods," he writes, "That's what the leaves are telling us tonight./Hear them frighten and be struck dumb/so that we sit up listening to nothing,/Which is always more worrisome than something."

Simic is no romantic. His speakers understand that the outside world is "shadowy/As your deepest self" (from "Romantic Landscape" 1994). Nature, if it has any secrets, is not letting us in on them, and has nothing to divulge about us.

Art and imagination cannot decode nothingness, either. In Simic's landscape, knowledge, truth, beauty and happiness are small fires that flare up, only to be doused by darkness.

But there is still the individual voice for which to be thankful. Simic has characterized the poetic process as "chewing on the bitter verb/'To be'" ("Mystic Life" 1999). His poetry reminds you to recognize the dark life of the soul.

By John Manderino '88G
Academy Chicago, 2001

Reason for Leaving is about a nameless protagonist's employment experiences, from his first job as a delivery boy for Novak's Meat Market in 1961, to "Writer, 1979 to the present." Its chronological format allows us to see what knowledge the protagonist does or does not gain from his various posts. The novel invites us to ponder the nature of work: how do jobs define us, and how should we view the various successes and failures we experience? Manderino's hero is well-meaning and deeply flawed, and his experiences are very real, and really poignant. They also are often hilarious.

As a boy, the protagonist hopes to be a baseball player, although he has a shadowy idea of his limitations: "I study the box scores. I have a deep desire that a few years from now my name will begin appearing there, and a deep fear that it won't." That fear, and a related one having to do with being labeled a quitter, begins to shape his psyche. He spends a summer digging ditches, everyday on the verge of quitting: "I look up at that one flimsy cloud, still there. I look down at the shovel in my hands. There's no escape, I realize. And I give up. I surrender to this place. To the sun. To eight hours a day. To work."

As he continues to experiment with different jobs--security guard, Vista volunteer, field worker, Zen Buddhist trainee--he confronts his inability to commit to a profession that fits. And baseball keeps coming up. After a disastrous stint as a tutor on an Indian reservation, he decides to try umpiring:

"All right, here we go, you're the boss, here it comes...
It's high.
A little.
I think.
Or is it.
I don't know.
Call something...
They seem to despise me... They found out I'm not really the boss. That I'm not really anything at all. That I go from job to job to job. That I'm back with my parents now. That next month I'll be thirty."

One might be tempted to define Manderino's novel as a loser pica-resque if it weren't so perceptive at detailing the emotional component of just about everybody's job experiences. You will recognize yourself in these funny, moving pages.

Also of Note...
Getting Over Jack Wagner by Elise Juska '97G, Simon and Schuster, 2003. See at amazon.com Juska, whose stories have appeared in many magazines, teaches writing at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. This first novel is a hip and funny story about the hazards of falling for would-be rock stars. Know Your Dreams, Know Yourself by Judith Lutzhoff Scharff '78, '81G Chalet Publishers, 2003. See at Just Bookz The author, a psychology professor, offers an insightful method for interpreting dreams and understanding them as opportunities for growth. The Lively Shadow: Living with the Death of a Child by Donald M. Murray '48 Ballantine Books, 2003. See at amazon.com Murray is a Pulitzer Prize winner and professor emeritus of English. He has written an honest and poignant account of the death of his daughter, Lee, from Reye's syndrome at the age of 20. His struggle to accept, but not forget, what has happened is bound to help others who have lost a loved one. Swan Harbor: A Nature Counting Book by Laura Rankin '75 Penguin Putnam, 2003. See at amazon.com Following on the success of her award-winning book The Handmade Alphabet,Rankin has turned to the counting-book genre. This lushly illustrated book counts 20 creatures and plants found in Swan Harbor, Maine.		Intimacy and Depression by Ralph H. Desmarais '60, '63G Earthling Press, 2003. See at booksurge.com The author, a psychologist, convincingly outlines how depression can cripple relationships, and provides methods for recovery. Safe in Heaven Dead by Samuel Ligon '89G, HarperCollins Publishers, 2003. See at amazon.com The protagonist of Ligon's affecting first novel is confronted with corruption in both his personal and professional lives. Ligon lives in Madison, Wis. The Patience of Rivers by Joseph Freda '78G, W.W. Norton & Company, 2003. See at amazon.com This big-hearted novel takes place during the summer of 1969, and chronicles both the tumultuous changes of the era in the small, upstate New York town of Delaware Ford and in 18-year-old Nick Lauria and his family. Freda, who received a master's in fiction writing at UNH, lives in Kenoza Lake, N.Y. Field Work Savvy: A Handbook for Students in Internship, Co-Operative Education, Service-Learning and Other Forms of Experiential Education by Joan Elgosin Milnes '76 Pleasant Word Publishing, 2003. See at amazon.com Milnes, who plans to donate all proceeds from her book to the needy, has written a lively and helpful guide for students of all ages who are embarking on various forms of field work.