WHAT DO YOU THINK?, Ken Weir. Austin Macauley
Publishers, New York, NY, 2023, 137 pages, $19.95, paperback. www.austinmacauley.com/us
Modern poetry
began with the shift from an either / or mentality to a more ubiquitous both
/ and. Precursors to that inclusiveness include Blake—his capacity to see
unity in diversity, as in “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”—and Keats’ negative
capability, not only an ability to simultaneously hold contradictory thoughts
but to embrace the uncertainty about them. Of course, Dickinson and Whitman
ushered in modern poetry—Dickinson’s unconventional use of dashes, e.g.,
offered constant oppositional assertions, and paved the way for later poets to
experiment with craft and content. And Whitman’s “Do I contradict myself? Very
well then, I contradict myself” is practically a watchword for twentieth
century American poetry. Much twenty-first century poetry coming from MFA
programs today, seems to be an expression of pre-determined views rather than
operating in the tradition that these poets began—one of discovery rather than
of expression. Ken Weir’s What Do You Think harkens back to a time when
poets worked within a multiverse of views and challenged readers to take an
active role in the poem’s re-creation as it was read and spoken.
Appropriate
to Weir’s task, he quotes Oliver Cromwell in his introduction, setting the
stage for his approach to poetry as inquiry: “I beseech you, in the bowels of
Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.” In the 17th century,
when Cromwell, in a letter to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
penned these words, Copernicus and Gallileo had come under harsh censure by the
church and in the end, their books that promoted heliocentrism were banned and
burned—as Weir’s would have been in that century, particularly because of his
poems that begin with science facts and riff on them, such as “Conceit.”
We stand on this planet,
one amongst billions,
as sand on the shore,
innumerable.
Beyond the nearest star
the universe expands
through millions of light years.
For 300,000 years
(the flare of a match),
Homo sapiens imagined we came from
the Sun,
from Mount Olympus,
or a personal God,
who listens to our every plea.
Prosaic as it may be,
we emerged from the sea
and return to the earth.
The
collection is divided into five sections: Transience; Medicine and Science; Religion
and Politics; Aging, Love and Family; and History and Remembrance. “Conceit” is
from the Transience section and is emblematic of Weir’s layered poems—conceit
working both as the prominent metaphor of expansiveness as sand throughout the
poem, denoting the billions of planets in our universe and connoting the
endless possibilities for conjuring the origins of our existence, as well as
the common meaning of conceit as self-centeredness. Another poem from section I
utilizing concrete imagery and particularity to flesh out its title is “The
Shards of Time.”
The dinosaur that stands fossilized
Upon my desk, ran on the earth
200 million years ago.
In the terrain of papers and pens,
She is reunited with
The ammonites and trilobites
That populated her world.
Homo sapiens, a species
A thousand-fold younger,
Now steers the ark.
On whose desk will we rest
A million years hence?
In this poem, even more so than in
“Conceit,” Weir’s talent for rendering the actual feeling of experience
connects with his ability to make lines and sentences their own forms of
experience. I mean that, along with the accuracy and fidelity of a first-rate
realist, Weir has an entirely unique metaphorical imagination—allowing him to
honor and render the mysteries as well as the facts of personal and collective
life.
The
best poems in this collection maintain that unity of two elements that are
usually at odds: both the abstract feelings and the concrete details of
experience. “Breakfast Time” is another such poem, utilizing concrete images of
“Juncos,” “A hairy woodpecker” and “A Cooper’s hawk,” contrasted with editorials
in the daily newspaper. In addition, Weir’s timing is flawless, in delivering
his knock-out-punch of the last line.
The editorials are benign.
Juncos forage in the snow,
below the brimming feeder.
A hairy woodpecker pecks
staccato on the oak.
A Cooper’s hawk plunges down,
feathers drift across
my window; time to read
the obituaries.
Death sprouts from the natural
world as any other observation, and is as non-threatening, although as
surprising as in actual experience—reminiscent of the voice of William
Stafford. Other noteworthy poems in this collection are “Volatility” (from
section II, Medicine and Science), “Gene Pool” and “If You Have These” from
section IV, Aging, Love and Family. In “Volatility,” Weir makes wonderful music
with half-rhymes and near-rhymes:
Despite the cold, the sun
feels warm upon my back.
The feeder’s full and on the ground
the small-cap juncos peck.
Should I spread the wealth,
kick sunflower seed below?
But no, emerging markets urge
the flight to Southern climes.
Yet wait, there’s thistle seed
awasting and dividends to
pluck before we fly.
Perhaps a short diversion North
in search of golden grains?
The NASDAQ and the sun’s still
high,
why have the faint-hearts fled?
The high-flying indices plunge
down;
their talons tear my nest apart.
“Emerging / urge,” “wait /
awasting,” “there’s / thistle,” “diversion / search,”—even the regular use of
“the” (“the cold, the sun” and “The feeder’s…the ground”) sing their own
meanings to us throughout the poem, so that the final line is delivered with
even greater intensity, once again enacting the poem’s abstract title in one
final stroke of concrete metaphor.
In “Gene Pool,” the final lines of the first
of two stanzas create a strong metaphorical image of the list of evidences of an
intelligent woman with “…all stacked / in the library of her mind.” To
parallel, the final lines of stanza two speak of the unstacking of memories
with disease:
Later, it seemed, she
could no longer find
the right shelf. Rummaged
around to recall those
who had eaten at her table
the previous night.
My Mother had…what’s his name?
You know…that…
that disease.
“If You Have These” is a list poem
of aspiration experiences the poet has for his son that intimates a swelling
tide toward the final section with, particularly with its final line.
The smell of turf smoke,
roar of Atlantic rollers,
the splash of purple heather,
blaze of orange montbretia,
the dark promise of blackberries,
the crackle of grasshoppers,
keeping of a gull
or rasp of the crows,
the hand of a man who knew your
father,
the laughter of friends,
the silence of the full moon,
the stone on which
my brothers sat,
I have no more to give.
In
What Do You Think, Ken Weir has inserted himself into the poetic cannon
with poems of craft, intellectual substance, and emotional connection that all
poets and lovers of poetry would do well to read. They look backwards to the 20th
century’s broad field of ideation and possibility, without attempting to make
up readers’ minds or hearts about what is, what is important, and why—a fresh
approach to age-old questions in the midst of the culture wars of the 21st
century. I’m convinced that poems like “The Shards of Time,” “Conceit,” and “If
You Have These,” among others, will captivate and move their readers for many
years to come.
I close with the
collection’s antepenultimate poem, “Ready or Not” which brings to mind
Whitman’s final words from Song of Myself: “Failing to fetch me at first
keep encouraged, / Missing me one place, search another, / I stop somewhere
waiting for you”:
I go ahead,
down by the lake,
where the white squirrel nests
and the wood-ducks dive
I will be waiting.
In early Spring,
when the ice crackles
on the frozen shore,
you will hear my voice
when the wild geese call.
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