God Is in the Cracks: A Narrative in Voices - Softcover

Sward, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0887534228 ISBN 13: 9780887534225

Verlag: Black Moss Pr, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

Book by Sward Robert

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Críticas:

"the irrepressible aliveness and weird wisdom of the father-son series should win it a lasting place in the literature of our day."
-- Robyn Sarah, The Globe & Mail

"Comic juxtapositions and startling wordplay heighten immediacy and expectation. [Sward's] larger-than-life [podiatrist] father dominates Rosicrucian in the Basement: 'Feet don't lie/don't cheat, don't kiss ass. Truth is/peoples' feet are too good for them.'" ["One-Stop Foot Shop"]
-- Sylvia Adams, Canadian Bookseller

"I like the wide sweep of it. There are many mysteries between father and son that people don't talk about There's much leaping, but each line, so to speak, steps on something solid."
-- Robert Bly on Rosicrucian in the Basement

"The CD is terrific Rosicrucian in the Basement unfolds perfectly at its own pace and never loses the listeners."
-- Dana Gioia

"fierce, new-minted and convincing he has a voice and a range."
-- New York Times Book Review on Kissing the Dancer

Sandburg-Livesay Award Winner selected by Welsh poet Anne Lewis-Smith, Newport, Dyfed, Wales, editor of Envoi and managing director of Envoi Poets Publications.

Sward cuts deeply
By ROBYN SARAH
Toronto GLOBE & MAIL, Saturday, December 4, 2004 - Page D34

The Collected Poems, 1957-2004

By Robert Sward

Black Moss, 228 pages, $25

What I would really like to say about The Collected Poems of Robert Sward would not be a book review. I would like to say: Listen to this! and quote a whole poem, then another and another, just letting the poems speak for themselves. As poetry goes, and especially poetry published in Canada, this is an unexpected book and a breath of fresh air.

How, except by quoting, can one convey the effect of lines like these from Kite, a poem of bereavement from a child's perspective -- no, from adult recall of that child's perspective -- no, from adult recall of the feel of that child's perspective:

after she did not want to come down

again. She was skypaper, way up

too high to pull down. The wind

liked her a lot, and she was lots

of noise

and sky on the end of the string.

And the string jumped hard all

of a sudden,

and the sky never even breathed,

but was like it always was, slow

and close

far-away blue, like poor dead

Uncle Blue.

Auntie Blue was gone, and I could

not

think of her face. And the string

fell down

slowly for a long time. I was afraid

to pull it

down. Auntie Blue was in the sky,

just like God. . .

Sward, now 70 and a dual citizen, lives in Santa Cruz, Calif. Resident in Canada from 1969 to 1985, he taught at the University of Victoria and ran Soft Press for 10 years. His poetry appears now tobe better known in the United States than in Canada. This is a shame, and one hopes this Collected Poems will remedy it. But it's anybody's guess, because Sward's poetry runs counter to so much of what we have come to expect and accept as poetry here.

What is this book not ? It is not intellectually precious, trumped-up or sanctimonious. It does not take itself too seriously. It is not "confessional," even at its most autobiographical. It does not tax us to understand what it is talking about. It is not prose, even when it most resembles prose. And it is not numbingly uniform in effect: Sward can write a dramatic monologue that is part stand-up comedy routine, part Talmudic discourse; he can give us child's-eye whimsy, satirical prophecy or surrealist nightmare; he can write a classical sonnet that is metrically perfect and allusive, yet modern and hilarious ( Socrates at the Symposium ) or a found poem that takes the pulse of the times with sly irony ( Personal Stress Assessment ). Not every poem is substantial -- the book has its share of pieces I would call lightweight -- but this is a collected works, so their inclusion can be forgiven.

The heart and core of this book is a series of dramatic monologues and dialogues between father and son (beginning in Sward's 2001 collection, Rosicrucian in the Basement, and ongoing in the subsequent Heavenly Sex ) the irrepressible aliveness and weird wisdom of which should win it a lasting place in the literature of our day. Sward's Talmud-conversant father, of Russian-Jewish extraction -- a Chicago-based podiatrist by profession -- came unhinged after losing his wife and became (in the l950s) a Rosicrucian who practised his ritessecretly in the basement. Under the eye of his bemused "dreamer" son, he evolved his own blend of kabbalistic, Christian hermetic and prescient New Age mysticism, which lent its colours to his medical practice as well as to his view of that son's eventual career choice and several marriages.

Other remembered voices weave in and out of this remarkable sequence (grandfather, mother, step-mother, aunt, even a dog), but it is the father's that dominates. A fully believable new American, steeped in old-world Yiddish culture even as he accedes to the professional class, he's also a complex archetypal figure, or more than one: Jewish father, holy madman, Shakespearean fool -- a sort of Touchstone meets Tevye the Dairyman. "Just a tiny crack separates this world/ from the next, and you step over it/ every day, / God is in the cracks," he tells his son, as he fits him for arch supports. "You have two fathers, / one you can see, / one who looks like me; / and one you can't, / the father you'll never see," he tells him from his hospital bed in After the Bypass . "There is no place empty of God," he says, and "Darkness is a candle, too./ So open the window in your chest./ Let the invisible fly in and out." The cumulative effect of these crackpot mini-sermons, shot through with visionary insight, is more than humorous: It is to waken unexpected emotions and nudge the seeker in us all.

Sward's voice might best be described as wonderstruck. By turns humorous and serious, ecstatic and perplexed, he is always fanciful, lively and life-affirming. His Collected Poems is that most unusual thing in contemporary Canadian poetry: a good-humored, gregarious and heartfelt book, abundantly humanand unfeigned.

Montreal writer Robyn Sarah's most recent poetry collection is A Day's Grace.

(From) Rosicrucian in the Basement

"What's to explain?" he asks.

He's a closet meditator. Rosicrucian in the basement.

In my father's eyes: dream.

"There are two worlds," he says,

liquid-filled crystal flask

and yellow glass egg on the altar.

He's the "professional man: --

so she calls him, my stepmother.

That, and "the Doctor":

"The Doctor will see you now," she says,

working as his receptionist.

He's a podiatrist -- foot surgery a specialty --

on Chicago's North Side.

Russian-born Orthodox Jew

with zaftig Polish wife, posh silvery white starlet

Hilton Hotel hostess.

From The Collected Poems, 1957-2004, by Robert Sward

(Please note: selections from the father-son sequence are included in the new book, God is in the Cracks)

Robert Sward is the master of the logical incongruity the very essence of surprise and delight in poetry. He is a compassionate storyteller who looks at life through the sincerity and profundity of genuine wit, always rising above the ordinary, the mundane and the despairing. Beneath every poem lies a playful metaphysics, a melodious ear, and the exacting ability to tear down that artificial barrier that exists between the reader and the poems. It is a joy to walk in the world of Swards perceptions and to discover the wonder that inspires each poem.
Take for example a poem such as A Walk in the A Scenery. One moment Sward is pointing out to us something he has noticed, and the next we are part of the very scene he has directed our eye toward. I am reminded of the playfulness, not only of Apollinaire, but of that marvelous scene in Mary Poppins where the Banks children leap into a sidewalk chalk drawing. In poetry there should not be that barrier of artificiality which all too often interjects itself between the reader and the work. What Sward manages time and time again in his poetry is to break down that barrier. He makes his poems engaging to the point where we are not only invited to partake of them, but in them. And herein lies the secret behind Robert Swards incredible opus: he is not just a poet but a poet who guides his reader. What William Meredith may have mistaken for the unusual when he wrote his introduction to Swards first book of poems, Kissing the Dancer (1964), is not unusual at all: it is just unexpected, and Sward always relishes the opportunity to point out such things. As a poet, at first glance he appears to be almost a jack-in-a-box who has learned how tocrank his own handle; yet every time he leaps out we remain surprised and pleased, and the pop is always accompanied by Look here! And we do.

Whenever the word guide comes up one automatically thinks of Virgil leading Dante through Hell. On our right we have the Fraud artists, and on our left the SodomitesIn essence, what Dante is allowing his recreated Roman poet to do is to train the eye by acting as pointer to unexpected recognitions and understandings that we might not notice on our own. Thats Dante being didactic. Sward is different. He loves to point things out to us, but they are things that he himself has just suddenly become aware of. There is a strong presence of epiphany throughout his works. His is the voice of the dreamer who has awakened to the moment of astonishment. What is incredible is that he has spent a lifetime in astonishment. There have been so many times when I have spoken to Robert over lunches or during long phone conversations between Toronto and California when he has uttered the phrase Wow! Each new recognition seems to bring a wave of exuberance to him.

Robert Sward has led a life of discovery. He was born in Chicago in 1933, the son of a Jewish doctor. He has always struck me as someone who has inherited an analytical, if not diagnostic mind the sort of brain that tries to figure out what it is seeing and explain it. As one reads through these poems there is a sense, however, that science would have been too limiting for Sward. The playful expanse of metaphor seems more to his ilk. At the age of seventeen, he joined the United States Navy and served in Korea about a three hundred foot LST (landing ship tank), and was placed in charge of asmall, but rather well-constructed library of twelve hundred books. It was while at sea that he began writing poems. Sward seems to have loved the navy because a) it presented him with a moveable library that he seems to have consumed ravenously; and b) it offered him the chance to indulge his spirit of discovery.

This spirit of discovery, which could very easily be assigned to the fact that Sward is a career academic who has taught at Cornell, Iowa, the University of Victoria, and UC Santa Cruz, goes deeper than mere book learning. Theres an ocean inside Sward and he is constantly attempting to plumb its depths in search of intellectual, physical and spiritual meaning. In some of his most moving poems such as Chicagos Walheim Cemetery, he struggles to find the depth within himself that will enable him to shed tears: Now, I too will attempt tears. / They are like song. They are like flight. / I fail. Yet the mere recognition of the failure is contact with the poets duende. In other poems, where he comes face to face with the unfamiliar, such as Impossible Hurrican Loss-of-Name Poem, Sward asks If I dig a hole will I find a poem? / A pot of unicorns? / A herd of leprechauns? / I ask. The rainbow has already moved. Sward never met a trope he didnt like. In the hands of a lesser artist, such a gift would be a disaster. The poem, however, concludes, O name poor name, / will the rain care for you as I have cared for you? / Will the wind devour you, / knock your head against a tree? / Already I have forgotten. Such poems are more than mere tropery. They go beyond the conceit. They enter the realm of the mystical where reality and understanding fuse in that rare and often inexplicablesense of wonder and understanding that offers us meaning and sustenance.
Sward lists among his hobbies swimming, meditating, yoga and computers, three of the most spiritual and metaphysical activities I can think of. The critic Lawrence Lieberman once pointed out that in Swards poetry the mysticism of objects, of thingness is and inversion create a bizarre parody of conventional mysticism. With Wordsworth, we see into the life of things. In Swards world, things work their way inside our life, become parts of our psyche, dominate our minds and take us over, make us over, entirely. For Sward, the ability to see into things is a two-way street, and just as we can pop into the landscape, the landscape can, just as easily, pop into us. I wouldnt venture to call him a romantic. That would be too mundane. What I would cite, however, is the passionate and innate mysticism that Sward seems to have developed through in his poetry.
Whenever I pick up works by Rumi, I am always reminded of Swards poetry not just because he was the one who turned me on to that ancient Afghani but because, like Rumi, Sward is a poet of enlightened conversation. Rumi spent his life seeking the other, the one with whom he could have an enduring conversation, the dialogue of self and soul through which one makes the discovery of something far more beautiful than the merely observable. Take a look at Swards poems: many are, at first glance, quoted monologues, the voices of those he has heard and absorbed during his life time. They are all in search of an understanding of their place in the universe, both the subjective inner universe and the objective outer universe. But look closer. These are not just monologues. These are dialogues, and in such dialogues the conversations are not just addressed to the persona of the poems but to the reader. Yes, Sward is a poetic eavesdropper, but in his engaging opus, so are we. And by listening to what each voice has to say, we see not only into the souls of others but into our own inner lives.

When I used the term logical incongruity I meant it in the highest possible sense of praise for a poet. Logic helps us to see our way into the poets reality, but it is the very sense of the incongruous, the unexpected surprise, the inversion of relationship between images and objects, the metaphor that dares to flirt with fallacy but which conquers fallacy through the power of brilliant associate: these are the attributes of logical incongruity. In those poems where Sward looks at the world through the eyes of a dog, there is much more at work than humor or even the wide-eyed, tail-wagging innocence that a poet must have if he or she is to endure the cruelties of the world that must be observed. What is at work is a spiritual courage that declares to all who will listen, the impossible is possible because I believe it c...

Reseña del editor:

At the heart of God is in the Cracks is Robert Sward's Talmud-conversant father, of Russian-Jewish extraction—a Chicago-based podiatrist by profession—who came unhinged after his wife's death at age 42.
In the late 1940s he became a Rosicrucian and practiced his rites secretly in the basement of the family home. Dr. Sward evolved his own blend of kabbalistic, Christian hermetic, and prescient New Age mysticism which lent its colors to his medical practice as well as to his view of his son's eventual career choice and several marriages.
God is in the Cracks draws on Rosicrucian in the Basement and Heavenly Sex (Black Moss Press) and includes more than a dozen new poems in the father-son series. The poems, monologues and dialogues in the father's voice, are sequenced to form a narrative spanning 60 years (1945-present). At the heart of God is in the Cracks is Robert Sward's Talmud-conversant father, of Russian-Jewish extraction—a Chicago-based podiatrist by profession—who came unhinged after his wife's death at age 42.
In the late 1940s he became a Rosicrucian and practiced his rites secretly in the basement of the family home. Dr. Sward evolved his own blend of kabbalistic, Christian hermetic, and prescient New Age mysticism which lent its colors to his medical practice as well as to his view of his son's eventual career choice and several marriages.
God is in the Cracks draws on Rosicrucian in the Basement and Heavenly Sex (Black Moss Press) and includes more than a dozen new poems in the father-son series. The poems, monologues and dialogues in the father's voice, are sequenced to form a narrative spanning 60 years (1945-present).

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Black Moss Pr
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0887534228
• ISBN 13: 9780887534225
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 120