Exonians in Review
Dispatches from the New Life L E F T- H A N D E D : P O E M S , B Y J O N AT H A N G A L A S S I ’ 6 7 A review by Ralph Sneeden
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n his translation of Eugenio Montale’s poem “Seacoasts,” from Collected Poems 1920–1954 (1998), poet Jonathan Galassi seemed to be preparing the ground for his own new collection:
“Sad spirit of the past and you, new will that calls me, perhaps it’s time to unite you in a calm harbor of wisdom. And one day, we’ll hear the call again of golden voices, bold enticements, no more divided soul. Think: to make the elegy a hymn; to be reborn; to want no more.”
sections—“A Clean Slate,” “The Crossing” and “I Can Sleep Later”—a triptych that transforms the pitfalls of colloquial tidiness into the phases of an epic journey. The language of decision and aftermath per meates the ar rangement, whose poems, ultimately, draw more from the carpe diem tradition than the confessional, especially in the jazz-inflected “Once”: “…And time is short; you have to live it.” Familiar maxims and phrases might stoke some of the poems’ momentum, but charged with Galassi’s raw sensibility about cause and effect, mutability and irrevocability, these sometimes ironically playful impulses surpass any flirtation with cliché in that same poem’s other riffs:
If the letter’s been sent you can’t rewrite it. If the cigarette’s been smoked you can’t not light it.” And especially a few stanzas later, where he boosts the acuity of image: Jonathan Galassi ’67 has published his third collection of poetry.
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The Exeter Bulletin
S UMMER 2012
Left-handed (2012) might not be the calmest of harbors for any reader (thank goodness), but the expansive voice that articulates its wisdom does reach across the borders of hymn while embracing and struggling against elegy with every page, whether in ruminations on the contours of hills, the changing of the seasons or human relationships. A deeply personal but universal book of poetry, Galassi’s third and latest collection is divided into
“The Scotch tape end is lost you can’t unwind it. The earring’s in the lake; you’ll never find it.” Some of the poems are addressed to a “you,” who is not the poet’s other self; rather, he’s “Jude,” an epistolary target whose persona fluctuates among lover, ally, Thomas Hardy’s tragic figure, fellow sufferer, and agent of rebirth:
MICHAEL LIONSTAR
“…the train has left the station you can’t take it. Once the promise has been broke you can’t break it.