77 ANTIPOEMS.
By Erlend E. Jacobsen'56. Bedford, Mass.: Pierian Press, 1964.42 pp. $1.00.
Review a book for these pages and you get to keep it — in this case recompense enough.
Erlend Jacobsen, among other things, is a chandler and the son of a tea importer. His "antipoems" are true to these gentler traditions, but to experience them most of us will need a slower place to listen from.
#35 In the garden The sparrow Concentrates On the crumb Of a great secret.
Antipoem-openended word picture, each one wedded as closely as possible to its own instant. The feeling, once you've made all the knowledgeable Eastern associations (and gotten by them), is very close to the level of first-hand experience. It's the poem and you. Jacobsen (as poet) stays out of the way.
#11 His love Her portrait done, Her every mood and grace Within it now, He found had turned To paint.
Jacobsen writes that his antipoems "attempt to penetrate the self-consciousness with which many modern poets obscure the essential expression of their poems. ..." Meaning it's often next to impossible to get back there - for the reader to find again the place where the poem happened. Jacobsen makes his appeal to what is. Readslower, he is telling us, what matters is theword. Let it work.
#48 Winter trees Bare-limbed Stretch and sway Through wind-tides Like fragile Feeding Sea anemones.
#75 Deceived by what before Had always been the sun The hornet Strikes the heated bulb Again and again.
And one for the Big Green.
#50 Between the planks Of boardwalks Put down as all the snow Melts in the Hanover Spring Tonight there are Trails of moonlight moving Everywhere I go.
Experience is offered bareboned, as honestly as possible, as the poet attempts "to track in words a basic though complex simplicity, the most elusive of all particles - the poem itself."
Jacobsen, married and the father of three children, also writes plays, novels, and short stories. He teaches English literature at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt.
Reviewer Petraglia is a writerand student of poetry.
