GRASSES STANDING: SELECTED POEMS

RalphMills, Jr. Asphodel Press, 2001.  $14.95

CatherineKasper

      The virtue of any“selected” volume of a poet's work is paradoxical:

it promises to reveal boththe changing nature of the poet and his/her consistent poetic style, so thatquality is affirmed as well as growth. This

paradox isimplicit in the very title of Mills' newest book Grasses Standing

where both the ephemeral,delicate nature of prairie grass is embodied in

the title, along with theidea of its rooted permanence and echo of Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Ina clear lineage from Whitman and Thoreau,

Dickinson and Frost, Mills' poetry is particularly Americanthrough its

development of thepoet's specific relationship with nature.

      The exceptionalquality and significance of Mills' scholarship has perhaps distracted criticalattention from his stunning poetry. He is the author of numerous criticalmonologues and two volumes of essays. He is the editor of Theodore Roethke's prose and letters, and of The Notebooks ofDavid Ignatow. However, Mills is also the authorof twelve books of poetry, including A Window in Air (1993) and InWind's Edge (1997). His collection Living with Distance (1979)received the Society of Midland Authors prize for poetry, and March Light wasawarded the Carl Sandburg Award. Each Branch, published by Spoon RiverPoetry Press in 1986, contained poems from 1976 to 1985. Grasses Standingincludes poems from eleven of his books as well as new work.

      The mastery ofMills' poetry has escaped strict affiliation with

contemporarymovements and categories. Although he is not directly linked to The New YorkSchool, his poems maintain an appreciation for and make

integral use ofthe visual space of the page. The line lengths and placement

often serve to emphasize thesubject matter, or to add a tangible or

visceralquality to the observations. For example, in “Skeins,/twists,”

lines capture the floatingproperty of its subject matter:

      skeins,

                twists of

cottonycirrus,

                    such textures

under so much

blue––

The lines stretch and hang on the page like an image of theclouds

themselves, asthe use of consonance reinforces the visual image and its

implicittexture. Mills' poems appear to be small musical scores, fragments

of city life: leaves anddebris scattered across the page, “the bell call/of

seepingdrains,” “snow loosening. . .slips down the roof gables,” “wood

smoke or vapor,” “drizzle.”The poems themselves “shimmer,” “swizzle,”

"whirl” on the page. In“Evening Song,”:

clouds billow

                     shred to

take new

shapes

           faces forms

dislocate

              yellowy

leaf dust

              circles

circling down

The world in its motion is captured by the poet's careful eyeand evoked in

the language/fragments.Mills' style captures the inherent “dislocation” of

all things, the perpetuallymutable quality of our lives. Images set in

Millsianjuxtaposition are balanced by the forward slash, a sight marker of

two observations put in adynamic parallel (see many of his titles also). He

is able to apprehend and appreciate even the most minutemotion, from “the long, smoothened/buds one at a/time/fall open to dark”(“7/94); to “pressed together/match yellow-patched sepals/with slant light //sinking/down past grass & the/fine grains––” (“There”) to his message in“First/Sun”: “you'll not get/beyond the/fluttering/of this smallest/leaf.” The“silver maples,” the feathers of birds, the petals of flowers, a breezedelicate as breath, exposed roots, the wet edges of a porch floor are subjectto his Emersonian eye. In each poem, Mills reminds usof the impact of microscopic details. Like Roethke,he makes “Nature” new again by exposing its intricate workings, this time, inthe gray light of a Midwestern, urban landscape. Unlike Roethke,(or T.S. Eliot or William Carlos Williams), Mills does not infuse the naturalworld with his own ego, nor does he impose a master plan upon it. Rather, heappears to let the world work through him in glimpses, moments, in poems simplytitled “Lights,” “Brief Thaw,” “Porch Steps,” or “14 January,” “2/5,” “10/93.” GrassesStanding can be read as a long poetic sequence in epistolary form, anintimate journal of life and death. The poet becomes pure observer, a naturalhistorian. In this way, Mills' work is, perhaps, most in sympathy with theObjectivist poets,          like Louis Zukofsky who wrote:

            In sincerity shapes appearconcomitants of word combinations, precursors of. ..completed sound or structure, melody or form. Writing occurs which is thedetails, not mirage, of seeing, of thinking with the things as they exist, andof directing them along a line of melody. Shapes suggest themselves, and themind senses and receives awareness. . .

            This rested totality might be calledobjectification––the apprehension satisfied completely as to the appearance ofthe art form as an object. . .[Its] character may be simply described as thearrangement, into one apprehended unit, of minor units of sincerity––in otherwords, the resolving of words and their ideation into structure. (“Sincerityand Objectification” 273-74)

While critics of Objectivism worry that this method mayreduce “poetic craft to the merely descriptive function of making perceptualimages––thus trapping poetic energies within scientisticreductions of the psyche,” (Charles Altieri, “TheObjectivist Tradition” The Objectivist Nexus 30), Mills walks at theedge of this precipice and avoids this downfall. He does so through sparse, uninflated diction and the appearance of the poet, not in aposition of superiority, but as another alterable shape sincerely scrutinized:

            1/18

         :such faint

                      early sky

& the last

quarter moon

                      stillpearl

              drops into

clouds––

           someone else hasleft with

no notice: doors in his

sleep widened   /

                           “youcan think you

think how

                it

        was”

Here, the doors “someone” must leave through are also the“doors in

his/sleep,” so that both thepoet and the reader enter and travel unfettered

through thepoem; the poet's thoughts are fragments in air. The molecules of the reader'sthoughts also, (through the use of second person), become part of thecomposition and the “line of melody.” Like the telescopic image of the moonbecome “still pearl,” the poetic necessity “drops into/clouds,”

into the “sleep widened”area between waking and sleeping, between control

and relinquishment ofauthority. Mills is not mentioned in The Objectivist

Nexus (an excellent book about the movementedited by Rachel Blau De Plessisand Peter Quartermain) perhaps because of hiswillingness to waive

authority, relinguish the “I” who “sings of myself” and instead, letthe

poems emerge from the gapsand silences, from the “melody” and the

"structure.” In GrassesStanding, the presence of the “I” diminishes and

eventuallydissolves into a collective consciousness of a transient world.

      In trying tocategorize poetry, it's common to seek out ego/authority in its obviousplumage, often because it's simply difficult to miss. As a result,

some of the most interestingand complex poetry gets less attention (and

less readership) than itdeserves, reminding us that it's essential to

remember toexamine the periphery of major literary movements for excellent work. Belovedby savvy poets and scholars, but also by botanists and visual artists, Mills'poetry resides here, in the instant

           in-

between

            chips, splinters

of ice:

           pallid

blades & the frail

waveringstrands––

                         these

                                  grassesstanding