THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 22, 1995 TAG: 9501240501
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY LYNN DEAN HUNTER
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
LIGHT YEARS
New and Selected Poems
DABNEY STUART
Louisiana State University Press. 196 pp. $24.95. Poems by 15 Contemporary North Carolina Poets
EDITED BY MICHAEL MCFEE
University of North Carolina Press. 276 pp. $24.95.
LIGHT YEARS: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS establishes Virginian Dabney Stuart's
place among the modern poets. A retrospective of 30 years of lucid writing,
Light Years shows the poet's growth in voice, technique and self-awareness.
Stuart's debut book of poems, The Diving Bell, appeared in 1966. He was 28,
a young adult searching his past for clues to how to live his future. In the
ensuing three decades, Stuart published eight more books of poetry, two of
them nominees for Pulitzer Prizes; a critical study of Vladimir Nabokov; and a
collection of short stories, Sweet Lucy Wine.
Stuart's range of style and form is astonishing: Some work employs rhyme,
stanza and meter; some is free even of punctuation. Some is styled
satirically; some autobiographically; some in the poetic heritage of William
Butler Yeats and Robert Lowell. Still, there is a bedrock under it all: Stuart
writes with an unflinching honesty. The reader can trust him to tell the
truth, whatever the subject may be.
Born and raised in Richmond, with grandparents in Hampton, Stuart has a
Virginian's sense of place. Many of his poems are set in towns where he's
lived or near Lexington, where he is an English professor at Washington and
Lee University. His images of nature are Virginian - the Blue Ridge, rivers,
rocks, killdeer, dogwood. Yet, Stuart's poems are not simply about places; nor
are they purely personal. Rather, he molds familiar details of place and
happenstance into a forum for the exploration of larger issues.
In ``Rescue,'' this questioning voice returns to the place where the poet
once nearly drowned, in Hampton Creek:
I am no better swimmer
now than when I was five
and the past is more treacherous water
than the creek. . .
-
Similar concerns with the past, the personal and a Southern sense of place
dominate The Language They Speak Is Things to Eat, an anthology of North
Carolina poetry published by the University of North Carolina. (UNC Press
produced The Rough Road Home: Stories by North Carolina Writers in 1992.)
Edited by poet Michael McFee, whose poetry is included, this collection
offers a healthy selection from the works of 15 contemporary writers - who
were born in North Carolina or have long lived in the state - rather than the
usual anthology menu of three or four poems by 50 or 60 poets. McFee's
arrangement creates a vastly more satisfying reading experience.
Poems by Maya Angelou, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Robert Morgan, Fred
Chappell, Reynolds Price, Betty Adcock and others explore the ways that
language can paint a Southern landscape. In the poem that gives the book its
title, James Applewhite writes:
The tobacco's long put in. Whiffs of it curing
Are a memory that rustles the sweet gums.
Pete and Joe paid out, maybe two weeks ago.
The way their hard hands hook a bottle of Pepsi Cola,
It always makes me lonesome for something more.
The language they speak is things to eat.
Barbeque's smell shines blue in the wind.
Titles of Nehi Grape, Doctor Pepper, are nailed
Onto barns, into wood sides slivered and alive,
Like the color pork turns in heat over ashes.
Says McFee, justifiably so: ``The words they write are things to eat,
appetizing and nourishing.''
MEMO: Lynn Dean Hunter is a poet and fiction writer who lives in Virginia
Beach.
ILLUSTRATION: Photo
W. PATRICK HINELY
``Light Years: New and Selected Poems'' showcases Dabney Stuart's
vast range of style and form.
by CNB