This Time: New and Selected Poems by Gerald Stern, is a great introduction to this poet, who received the National Book Award for Poetry for this publication. He has also been the recipient of such important prizes as The Lamont Poetry Prize and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
This Time collects poems from seven of Stern's previous volumes, beginning with selections from his 1971 collection, Rejoicings, and on through 1995's Odd Mercy. Fourteen new poems close the book.
Collections such as This Time are similar to the "best of" albums that musicians put out. They take the favorites of a poet's past books and bind them together to give the reader a really fine overview of a poet. They also allow you to observe how a poet may change or adapt their style over many years.
I found myself drawn more to Stern's earlier work, which was a bit sparer and tighter in feel. Sometimes the brief but carefully crafted, powerful poem best says what you want to say. The selections from Rejoicing in particular were more allegorical, tending toward abstraction. I enjoyed the dreamy quality of many of these poems, and also the stark unexpected turns they took, especially "In Kovalchik's Garden", where a cardinal --
She is exploring the dead pear tree.
She moves quickly in and out of the dry branches.
Her cry is part wistful, part mordant.
She is getting rid of corpses.
Rita Dove has called Stern "our modern-day Walt Whitman, tinged with an old-world longing and a new world shambling reverence." ("Poet's Corner," Washington Post Book World, November 4, 2001). This "old-world longing" is evident in many of the poems culled from Stern's past collections. For instance, in the poem "Christmas Sticks," Stern writes:
Before I leave I'll put two sticks on the porch
so they can talk to each other about poor Poland
and wrap themselves around each other the way sticks
do when most of life is gone. They will lie
a little about Walesa, one will dance
and shake his dried-out leaves as if to threaten
the other, one will lean against the wall
as if there were boots to give him courage...
Stern has a great reverence for nature, and many of the poem sin this collection lean on the subject. In these works -- with titles like "Sycamore," "Red Bird," and "Nice Mountain" -- Stern's style is much more narrative than his earlier poems; the lines are longer, and the feel is more melancholic and meandering.
Stern really begins to explore a sense of "place" in his later poems, reminiscing about towns and countries he's lived in or visited, old friends and their importance to stages of his life. Through these poems we see a lot of who Stern really is, his history, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Jewish. Stern is extraordinarily introspective, and most of these poems are filled with "I- I- I-", loaded with "I remember" and "I will have to tell you." For example, these lines from "Memoir":
... I threw bottles
and bricks and dirt into the windows of
our enemy's little dark stores; and as for schooling
the closest we got to our books was when we covered them
with Kraft paper every September but I had
a girlfriend who played the harp and she was thin
and wise and I was stupid with her...
If you haven't read any of Stern's work, I highly recommend this collection. With the diversity of the poems selected for it, there is sure to be something for everyone, no matter what style of poetry you enjoy.
