Snow Approaching on the Hudson

November 1, 2020

Through many distinguished volumes, including Griffin and National Book Critics Circle winners, veteran poet Kleinzahler has earned the urbane, world-weary tone he displays in his latest work. While he does return to "the banks of the lordly/ Hudson," what's mostly on display is a world traveler considering past as much as present. "Odd, unsettling somehow, visiting here again after so many/ years," he muses at one point, elsewhere adding "What city is this? I inquired./ I might better have asked what country." But though he ranges far, with places blurring like a bad watercolor, Kleinzahler proceeds by careful accretion of detail: "Elvis is dead, the radio said,/ where it sat behind a fresh-baked loaf of bread/ and broken link of kolbasz," lines that also reveal his dark wittiness. VERDICT Kleinzahler tends toward the dyspeptic ("They are unattractive,/ these prosperous couples spread about at breakfast"), which can get wearing, but as he mutters, "If a phantasm,/ just go. I'm old." This is an accomplished work by someone who's seen it all.

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November 1, 2020
Kleinzahler has been publishing poems for 45 years. Live from the Hong Nile Club: Poems 1975-1990 (2000), selected from his early work, and the outstanding Before Dawn on Bluff Road/Hollyhocks in Fog (2017), two-books-in-one, divided his oeuvre into New Jersey and California poems. While Snow Approaching on the Hudson has poems from definite places, it also has poems set in cities and countries that resemble each other too much, lands and landscapes of memory and dream. There are set-pieces, such as the sleepy, memorable, menacing "Heat," which puts the bizarre "Quasi Afflatzi" in the shade. There are remarkable works here. But in others he relies on memory the way the drunk in the joke relies on the light from the lamppost, not for illumination but as an excuse for excesses he would never have allowed himself before. "None of it what it was, everything something else"--encountering that line in "'Coming on the Hudson': Weehawken," one feels the cost nostalgia exacts and appreciates the exacting description, so characteristic of Kleinzahler at his best, that he does not always attain here.

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December 21, 2020
Modernist slice-of-life vignettes abound in this atmospheric collection from Kleinzahler (Before Dawn on Bluff Road). Eclectic points of interest converge, from the novelties of high society to the lives of prominent figures and strangers. Kleinzahler is adept at creating images that express the emotional qualities of environments: “Passenger ferries emerge from the mist/ river and sky, seamless, as one—/ watered ink on silk// then disappear again, crossing back over/ to the other shore, the World of Forms.” He particularly excels at animating strangers; in an empathetic and humanizing portrait, he describes a homeless man that shares the same park: “Shadow Man is out there now, always out there./ I can tell you where by the hour on the clock,/ under which tree, what corner of the park, almost as if he’s waiting for someone,/ someone who, when ready, will know to come find him there.” At times his tempo, plethora of references, and meagerly contextualized dialogue can alienate the reader. Nevertheless, Kleinzahler’s collection is akin to a bountiful meal—substantially pleasing and worth the investment if consumed at a leisurely pace.