Island
From the portrait on its front cover to the notes on its last page, Island composes a love-song to a singular, multifarious place. A masterful poet writing in his sixth collection, Hartman harnesses the number p to find the form for its introductory long poem; celebrates a Greek island’s denizens, furnishings, and views in a series of concentrated and eccentric glimpses; writes in Greek and translates back to English; and boils the cumulative song down to rich prose meditation on maps and the body’s kinesthesis, wed in the knowledge that makes, however long or briefly, a home.
Unaccountable
(from Morning, Noon, and Night)
The heart of man — he says — is a mailbox dying of curiosity.
The soul entrusts it with the inscrutable. Our own houses
stand agape at our audacity. We baffle the sea.
Everything the hand of man lets fall is perfectly unlike
everything other, even and especially when made in imitation.
We astounded the gods when we had gods. Every day —he says —
I surprise myself, don't you? Look at these books, this garden,
that cannon in the square under the marble soldier.
Hollows
(from Morning, Noon, and Night)
Moon in the day, never the sun at night.
Water inland, never land long under water
because it isn't called that any more.
In hollows in the rocks, pockets of salt.
Summer coming to term in cicadas' dozing.
Cat in the open window, wrapped, asleep.
In a bed, in the afternoon, a man in a woman.
Fire inside the lantern. Roots in earth.