Field Notes
by Robin Becker
Women's Review of Books
Janaury/February 2006
In this new column, Women's Review of Books poetry and contributing editor Robin Becker provides news and commentary on poetry and the poetry world.
When poets and editors choose work for a volume of new and selected poems, they seek, out of the poet's previous work, those poems that will endure. In such collections, readers can rediscover favorite poems that made the cut and re-experience them alongside new work. The 22 new meditations and lyrics that open Gail Mazur's Zeppo's First Wife: New and Selected Poems (University of Chicago Press, 2005) clearly have their prosodic and thematic roots in Mazur's earlier poems. To honor those roots, I reprint below the title poem of Mazur's 1995 collection, "The Common," a poem that investigates citizenship, nation, and power. The speaker recalls negotiating the" cobbled plaza" of public space with her two small children. Cultural markers ("folk songs, rock concerts, Sunday demonstrations") situate us in time. Contrasting to the "granite" and "concrete" monuments to the Revolutionary and Civil War presidents is the "wood plaque, already rotting" for the transcendentalist writer Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Finally, the speaker's "take on faith" at the poem's close centers our attention on the philosophical. How precarious, tenacious, and vulnerable are those who, yoked together in this poem, partake of "The Common."
The CommonBy Gail Mazur
Iron cannons from the Revolution. Ghost music —
folk songs, rock concerts, Sunday demonstrations.
A granite slab for the elm where Washingtontook command. A new wood plaque, already rotting,
for Margaret Fuller Ossoli — the city fathers'
minimal nod to the life of her mind.The black trunks of old maples brushed with snow,
their strong lines rephrased by snow's finery.
From a concrete gazebo, Abraham Lincolngazes down at the cobbled plaza where raffish
bands plugged in, and stoned crowds gathered;
my small son and daughter skipped aheadof me, hand in hand, to the swings, the jungle
gym, the roundabout, and at home, pre-season
jonquils dazzled in a white crockery jug.Stringed beads — necklaces, earrings — for sale
by a woman who's sat cross-legged on folded blankets
since those days, those days.The season's worst cold brewing this early morning.
Two men huddled in damp sleeping bags spread out
on newspapers; convulsive dreams of their war.The oaks. The maples. In the near-zero day
I take on faith, faith in Nature, that life's
machinery groans and strains in the frozen limbs.
Women's Review of Books
Volume 23, Number 1
January/February 2006
Editor in Chief: Amy Hoffman
Poetry and Contributing Editor: Robin Becker
© 2005 Wellesley Centers for Women
and Old City Publishing, Inc., a member
of the Old City Publishing Group.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Poetry Daily / Amazon.com
Selected books available by Robin Becker:
The Horse Fair — Paperback
Selected books available by Gail Mazur:
Zeppo's First Wife: New and Selected Poems — Hardcover
