The Selvage

September 17, 2012
Gregerson opens her fifth volume with gritty American scenes—the farms where she grew up, with their Scandinavian immigrants, “the map// of blessed second chances writ in tasseled/ corn,” the school bus stops of blue- and of white-collar towns, occasions for lessons about place, about social class, about “honest work.” She then takes off into Latin literature, Christian tradition, Renaissance art, Greek myth. “Theseus Forgetting” compares the checkered record of that Athenian hero to the checkered records of our lives, and to the history of classical reading: “What comes to us in pieces—think// of Sappho on the midden heap—lays claim/ to us in ways the merely/ perfect can’t.” Gregerson uses her learning while trying to share it; weaker poems can read like remarks on their sources, but the strongest stand on their own, whether considering Ovid by the Black Sea (he didn’t give the place a fair chance) or reacting, without allusion or ornament, to grisly child abuse: “When I’m/ allowed to run the world you’ll/ have to get a license just to take the course on parenting and// everyone/ will fail it and good riddance we’ll die out.” She is not often so angry, but she can be that powerful, that direct, regularly.

June 1, 2012

In this fifth collection, National Book Award finalist Gregerson (Magnetic North) offers poems that reside within the margins of myth and reality, religion and science: "The fabric/ every minute bound/ by just that pulling-out that holds/ the raveling together." Most often employing winding and rhythmic couplets and tercets, Gregerson re-envisions mythology and history even as she makes metaphors of the craft of slating and the science of photography, for instance. A selvage, as referenced in the title, is a self-binding that keeps fabric from unraveling, and perhaps these poems offer a way for narrator and reader to keep the world from coming undone--though the narrator does suggest that "the only cure is living longer than the/ tyranny." In the end, these poems straddle the edge of despair ("Fragile the line between wonder/ and woe") but find balance in small salvations. Gregerson's "Obsession/ at the barricades" is rooted in language and lyric that is both elegant and shattered, and she allows readers their footing, a way to hang on. VERDICT A highly recommended book by an important poet.--Karla Huston, Wisconsin Acad. of Sciences, Arts & Letters, Madison

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