Hi Bob,
It's good to see you here again. Thanks for bring this collection to the attention of Sphereans.
Marilyn, there are a few reviews available at Amazon, and the most exhaustive and compelling is by our very own Poet Lariat, Tim Murphy, which I have quoted below. Those of you interested in getting your own copy of the book or reading all the reviews can do so directly here at Amazon.
Here is a quote of Tim's review, sample poems included:
Quote:
Robert Mezey has tirelessly thrown his energies into what appear to be Quixotic causes. I first encountered his name when I acquired the Selected Poems of Henri Coulette, which he edited with Donald Justice for Arkansas. Then he edited a beautiful Selected E.A. Robinson, which Modern Library has wantonly allowed to go out of print. Then a Selected Hardy for Penguin, likewise unobtainable. Mezey's introductory essays for these collections deserve republication in their own right, as first-rate works of literary criticism.
In 1999 I met Mezey at a session on poetic translation at the West Chester Conference on Form and Narrative. Alan and I were there to talk about our work-in-process with Beowulf, which was half done at the time. Professor Mezey had brought the majestic translations of Borges that he and the late Dick Barnes had completed. Chairing the panel, poet and translator Dick Davis repeated an old chestnut that I had never heard. "Translations are like lovers. There are those that are true and unbeautiful, and there are those that are beautiful but untrue." It seemed false humility on his part. Dick's translations from the Persian are so lucid it seems impossible they could be untrue. But the Mezey/Barnes recreations of Borges were revelations.
I had seen Borges at Yale being led on stage by his young wife, Maria Kodama. He recited his poems in Spanish, and they were followed by Norman Thomas di Giovanni, reading his unlovely English renditions. After Mezey and Barnes had published about one hundred of their true and beautiful translations, Viking Penguin, which had the rights to Borges in English, commissioned them to complete the task of translating all of the 440 poems. Later the publisher rejected this project in favor of a multi-authored hodgepodge. So the great Mezey/Barnes translation can only circulate as Samizdat literature. The treachery of those editors is the literary crime of the last century.
Dick Barnes died in 2000, aged 68; and I agree with Mezey that he was one of the best and least appreciated poets of his time. He left none of his original work in print; the little chapbooks and the two small trade books long since vanished. Now Mezey has edited a Selected Dick Barnes for Other Press. I received a prepublication copy yesterday. The vast majority of Barnes' work is free verse, to which I am generally unreceptive. Nonetheless, I find him compelling. He was a country boy from the Mojave Desert, whence many of his poems derive their extraordinary sense of place. He was also a profoundly spiritual poet, whose Christianity was deeply informed by Taoism and Buddhism.
Example and Admonition
My father's admonition: when given
a choice, choose the path that
leads uphill, always,
so up we went, but all led down soon after:
our destination Deep Creek, where water had gathered
by taking every downhill opportunity.
We thought of that when the higher path turned down,
but no one mentioned it then, nor ever, in fact, til now.
Two lessons: and though sometimes I feel clever,
and have read the Chou I book all about that water,
I've not forsaken either one. If there be something in a man
that flows uphill, he has to go with it
whatever sweat or humiliation may attend his going.
Done patiently, this is called "matching heaven with heaven."
Otherwise, just strife.
This is the work of an I Ching adept who has translated Borges' reflections on Heraclitus and rivers, a learned man who has the rare gift of imparting his lessons with deadpan humor. Here's another of my favorite Barnes poems:
Shoot Out
Neils Bohr noticed in Westerns that at the draw
the first man to go for his gun was always killed.
The other, who waited for that, was quicker.
Was it because the first man had to decide to shoot,
while the other, just reacting, could take a short cut?
That's what Bohr thought.
When I'd have explained by the plot: the bad guy wins
toward the middle, the good guy has to wait his turn.
That's how you know the bad guy. He knows it too,
and gloats for awhile, then loses his nerve
when he gets hints the movie is about to end.
According to the script. The scriptures. Amen.
But what if Bohr was right? And what if the script
is lost, or not even lost, but just forgotten?
And what if the wind hones the edge of my house?
I'm comin to get you, Tex.
There is a fabulous sense of rhythm in this poem -- the laconic voice of the rural California professor of Anglo Saxon spinning his yarn in conversational lines that have mostly four heavy stresses apiece. The voice of a man who knows his Bible, his physics, and High Noon. Here are the poems a famous Californian, Gary Snyder, might have written, had he been "gifted with so fine an ear," and chosen the slow mastery of traditional verse forms. Most of Barnes' formal verse will be available to us in about 2030, when Borges enters the public domain. But the little he left us is in this book, and here's one of my favorites. A take-off on "The House that Jack Built," it rivals Bishop's great poem for Pound, "Visit to St. Elizabeth's."
Trophy Hunt (for the Way Things Used to Be)
These are the sheep with curly horns
that roam the wild Mojave.
These are the wardens duly sworn
who guard the sheep with curly horns
as they roam the wild Mojave.
These are the hunters who drew the numbers
for a license at fifty thousand dollars
to pay the wardens duly sworn
and harvest some rams with curly horns
out on the wild Mojave.
These are protectors of animal rights
who came out and camped in the dark of night
to spook the rams and spoil the plans
of the lucky hunters who drew the numbers
and paid the wardens duly sworn
for a shot at a ram with curly horns
out on the wild Mojave.
These are the sheriff's deputies
called by the hunters to keep the peace
and prevent protectors of animal rights
from chasing sheep in the dark of night
to save the rams and spoil the plans
of the lucky hunters who drew the numbers
and paid the wardens duly sworn
for some trophy rams with curly horns
out on the wild Mojave.
These are the Channel Seven reporters
with their camera crews and helicopters
who followed the sheriff's deputies
called by the hunters to keep the peace
and prevent the protectors of animal rights
from chasing sheep in the dark of night
to save the rams and spoil the plans
of the lucky hunters who drew the numbers
and paid the wardens duly sworn
to kill a few rams with curly horns
out on the wild Mojave.
And this is me in my living room
with the light turned off and the TV on
and I wonder what happened to all of us
that left us in such an awful mess
with our helicopters and television
and our ball parks that have to be air conditioned,
yearning for days when we shot our food
and life was hard and hungry and good:
days you'd seldom see anyone
out there on the wild Mojave.
A Word Like Fire, the selected poems of Dick Barnes, went on sale last week. Amazon already has 33 used copies for five bucks, meaning that most of the review copies are for sale unread, more's the pity. Get yours now.
--Timothy Murphy
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