cover image In the Pines: Lost Poems: 1972-1997

In the Pines: Lost Poems: 1972-1997

David St John, David St John. White Pine Press (NY), $16 (174pp) ISBN 978-1-877727-90-0

The melancholic wisdom of St. John's sixth collection seems hard-won: his is the post-lapsarian ""solitary way"" of love lost daily and sex cheapened by night. Confessionally breathless, the syntax of these poems seems not spontaneous but rather like an exhalation long suppressed. Lack of punctuation--especially in the volume's last quarter, where not a single period appears--and a fondness for the ampersand lend an open-ended, speculative air that at times can cross the line to inconclusiveness. A typical crux at which these poems arrive is expressed in ""Red Wheat: Montana"": ""There is a kind of weeping so inconsolable/ It occasions only silence/ Just as there is a kind of silence so horrible it requires weeping."" The 18 parts of ""Nocturnes and Aubades"" imitate the Strand of Dark Harbor in their tendency towards long-lined tercets and in the way that limousines, foreign friends, and glasses of red wine crop up without warning in landscapes lit by moon- and starlight. In ""Memphis,"" St. John resurrects the King of Rock 'n Roll with kitschy spirituality as an Osiris in attendance ""The first time we did anything loving/That really mattered & might still once again/In the ever hushed and distant Memphis of our dreams."" The figure of the troubadour recurs; in ""Music"" he reveals that ""It became my passion to explain everything/With music even the randomness of starlight or death."" Deploying images that are sharp-edged (if bizarre) with the paratactic rush typical of his highly acclaimed work, St. John solidifies his growing reputation--Study for the World's Body: New and Selected Poems was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1994--and becomes, more than before, the wandering, soulful troubadour of whom he writes. (Mar.) FYI: In the Pines: Lost Poems 1972-1997, also due in March, presents St. John's previously uncollected work. (White Pine, $16 paper 176p ISBN 1-877727-90-3)