The first (of eleven) books that I actually finish on my vacation is Joanne Kyger's God Never Dies, a sixteen-poem suite that is itself the record of a journey, a month spent in Oaxaca. Curiously, here's a typo on the first page, dating the poem in the future "December 7, 2004 Sunday" even tho the title page instructs us otherwise - the journal encompasses December 7, 2003 through January 9 of this year - the idea of a Kyger poem written in the future is not an inapt figure for her work. The reason being that there is a descriptive capacity in her poetry that gives her poems the timeless quality one associates with certain great photographers, such as Atget. The intial poem is a case in point (and I'd quote it here in its entirety if only Blogger didn't "erase" the spaces needed to move lines away from the left margin).

Exactness is everything in Kyger's work - it's the literary equivalentof a Buddhist call for attention. The poem consists of two stanzas, the first seven lines long, starting close to the center of the page's invisible first line, drifting left & right in succeeding lines as tho no left margin actually existed, the stanza organized in fact around a dazzling display of the letter "p" in various combinations (pronouncing, droopy spider plant, perk up, cup). The stanza is characteristic Kyger in its domestic focus - the depiction of a birdsong & a plant, the latter of which in fact is a means of focusing not on the plant as such, but on its vibrancy responding to a cup of water.

The second stanza consists of two lines, both of which adhere to a hard left margin:

      Stroke of brush in painting

     Pitch of tone in writing

Not all of the poems in this 300-copy edition are this focused &, tho most are longer, none goes so far as three dozen lines. Kyger's commitment to attention permits a fair amount of lateral association, the mind skipping for the most part playfully. When that happens, we become aware that it is attention itself, rather than some narrative figuration, that we are witnessing.

Kyger shares this particular conjunction of values with relatively few other poets, Robert Grenier & the late Larry Eigner among them. Unlike them, though, Kyger makes the case for an argument that total playfulness & total attention are one (even when, say, discussing something as non-playful as the war in Iraq). Kyger has been one of our finest poets now for over 40 years. God Never Dies reveals her to be at the top of her game. Books can be bought from Bridge Street Books or directly from Blue Press, 515 Walnut Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA 95060. The cost is $6.00.