From Publishers Weekly
The gods of Gioia's ( Daily Horoscope ) second collection of poetry are like snow. Their glory is ephemeral. At first appearance, they dazzle--aloof, pure, silent. But like their human counterparts, they succumb to time and weather. Through catastrophe or a gradual melting away, change buries all things human and divine, and memory resurrects them only briefly. On these themes Gioia writes a few superb poems. "Counting the Children" concerns an accountant who, charged with settling an estate, discovers in the deceased's house a roomful of dismembered dolls. Later, watching his daughter sleep, he muses grimly: "Each spirit, be it infant, bird or flower, / Comes to the world perfected and complete, / And only time proves its unraveling." It seems ironic that Gioia mars his collection with several self-promotional poems. "My Confessional Sestina" targets "youngsters in poetry workshops" who write sestinas as "the official entry blank into the little magazines." Yet he merely asserts his own priority by mimicking the form and the practitioners he purports to disavow. pk
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The loss of a child permeates this second volume of poems from "a leader of the neo-formalist school of poetry," as Gioia is dubbed by his publisher. It is not the formalism that is of chief interest here--Gioia's prosody, while competent, can be a bit stiff and tidy--but the way some of these poems break out of bland formula into beauty. One stunning poem is "Planting a Sequoia," in which the narrator's act of planting a tree with his brothers ceremonializes a son's birth and death: "We plant you in the corner of the grove, bathed in western light,/ a slender shoot against the sunset." Two long Frostean narratives are well done yet conventional; of least interest is "My Confessional Sestina," which begins: "Let me confess. I'm sick of these sestinas/ written by youngsters in poetry workshops/ for the declaration of their fellow students." Just 40, Gioia can sound jaded before his time; in some of these poems, however, a fresher voice seems to be emerging. Recommended.
- Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New YorkCopyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
