Cole Swensen, _Try_

FROM 1999. ONE intriguing thing about Try is that all the poems are in the ekphrastic tradition and yet the main overall impression (for me) had to do with sound, a sensory possibility that paintings and sculptures do not possess. They can be seen, of course, and touched if the guard is not looking ("I touched the surface of the canvas," p. 14--one poem, however, is called "Noli Me Tangere"), even smelled or tasted, but not heard. But Try is often about structures made with sound.

For one thing, the sections of the book have titles that contain a variant of the volume title's monosyllable: e.g., "Trilogy," "Triad," Triage," and so on. The titles create both a phonetic and semantic connection with three-ness, which has a structural equivalent in the titled sections having three poems apiece, not to mention the resonances set echoing with section titles like "Triptych" and "Trinity" which involve not only three-ness but the Christian-themed art that most of the poems are facing.

Then there are all the local effects of sound, of which I hope one example will do for the many that could be cited: "and I saw someone leave and I saw the world that thrives on light clench and cleave."

Poetry preoccupied with sound is a familiar phenomenon, I know, but in this context, in poems taking on resolutely silent paintings and sculptures...it was if the poems were calmly telling you, "in order to give you any useful idea of this painting, I will have to very much be a poem."

As occurred to me with Mary Hickman's Rayfish, ekphrastic poetry seems ideal for the internet era, as a reader can now read the poem, find images of the painting or sculpture, and re-read the poem...this paid off handsomely with Swensen's poems on Rodin's "Christ and the Magdalene."

The internet could not tell me, however, whether the final clause of "Here," on p. 28--"the tip of a foot that won't sink back into the painting"--was an allusion to Balzac's Le Chef-d'oeuvre Inconnu, but I suspect it is.

By the way, I am annoyed that "Swensen" auto-corrects  to "Swenson." That "rayfish" auto-corrects to "raffish" has a certain charm but is still a pain.