Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 19, 1995 TAG: 9502210100
SECTION: BOOK PAGE: G-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO BOOK PAGE EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
When asked why he writes poetry, Jimmy Carter answers that he does it to play with words. It's not a flippant response.
The former president and current free-lance diplomat has just published his first book of verse, "Always a Reckoning." Based on his wide-ranging experience, the poems deal with such subjects as contemporary physics, growing up in the rural South, submarine warfare and, of course, members of his family.
The book is selling briskly but has not fared so well with the poetry establishment. In a recent telephone conference-interview, Carter said that he wasn't surprised "when professional poetry critics, whom I don't understand very well, didn't like the technique I had. But I've already weathered that prospect before the poems were published ... I submitted the poems to journals and they were not at all hesitant to reject some of the poems. Sometimes I put those poems aside, and sometimes I redid them or substantially abbreviated them. Most of these poems have been through 15 or 20 revisions, and I've learned in the process."
The book is not aimed at an academic audience, though Carter is quick to credit Miller Williams and Jim Whitehead for their help and guidance. Many of the poems rhyme, and even when he's dealing with abstract concepts of science or politics, Carter keeps his work firmly based in familiar reality and straightforward rhetoric. In "Peanuts," for example, he writes about going into town as a small boy to sell bags of peanuts and what the experience taught him of economics:
"I'd watch the solemn sale of gasoline;
Five gallons at the most was pumped by hand
Up to a glass container, clearly seen
By everyone, confirmed, then down to fill
T-Model tanks. No man took on faith
What cost him sixteen hours in the field."
To my tastes, the best poems in the book have at least a trace of humor. In the ones about family and close friends, the emotions he evokes can verge on sentimentality. When Carter takes on larger issues - homelessness, hunger, race - the results are about what his admirers and his detractors would expect. In that regard, Carter, the poet, is a reflection of Carter, the public figure. He is a moralist, man who has decided to do good as he sees it. And because of that, he is going to provoke intense reactions, not always favorable.
Still, in these days when empty self-promotion passes for wisdom and nonsense is treated as serious art, it's heartening to see a book like this on the best-seller list.
by CNB