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toniclark's review against another edition
4.0
Tipping Point was published 20 years ago (Word Works, 1993), but this is the first book I've read by Fred Marchant and I like it well enough to seek out more of his work. This collection won the 1993 Washington Prize in poetry. He has three other collections: Full Moon Boat (2000), House on Water, House in Air (2002), and The Looking House (2009). He is also the editor of a volume of the early poems of William Stafford (who, like Marchant, was a conscientious objector).
The poems are what I call formal, but they are free of meter and rhyme. I find this kind of writing extremely pleasing. I like a poem that makes a figure on the page (no, not shape poems). You know what I mean. The lines are arranged in stanzas that follow a pattern. (I didn't always appreciate/agree with his line breaks). :)
Some of the poems focus on his boyhood, especially poems of growing up in a house terrorized by his violent father. Descriptions of his father beating his mother are painful to read (but account for only a little of the text, in case this is off-putting). Autobiographical, but not really confessional. There are also poems about his father much later in life when he (the father) was dying of prostate cancer. Marchant has done a beautiful job of delineating this complicated relationship. He's able to write honestly about his father, but in the end, with a largeness of spirit you'd have to call forgiveness.
Now the wind sounds out clearly
and says this is the mountain
of forgiveness, and hat the work
will be to traverse the empty spaces
with meaning.
from "The Afterlife on Squaw Peak"
In between are wartime poems and, actually, several poems with lovely descriptions of the natural world. I'm not a nature-poem kind of girl, but I could appreciate these.
A long poem set on Okinawa, 1970, took my breath away for a couple of seconds. I lived on Okinawa in 1970. So long ago, but whenever I think of it, I can still feel the atmosphere, the strangeness. And I can smell it. My most vivid memories seem to be permeated with both exotic and repellent odors. It made me shiver to read this. And I too have swum in the East China Sea. Marchant was a Marine lieutenant, before being honorably discharged as a conscientious objector. I was married to an Army private. But we were there on the island at the same time.
The book as a physical object pleased me, too. I like the thick cream paper and attractive font (that's not too small!).
I can't find any of these poems available online, though some poems from his other collections can be found at The Poetry Foundation website and the Frank Olson Legacy Project site.
The poems are what I call formal, but they are free of meter and rhyme. I find this kind of writing extremely pleasing. I like a poem that makes a figure on the page (no, not shape poems). You know what I mean. The lines are arranged in stanzas that follow a pattern. (I didn't always appreciate/agree with his line breaks). :)
Some of the poems focus on his boyhood, especially poems of growing up in a house terrorized by his violent father. Descriptions of his father beating his mother are painful to read (but account for only a little of the text, in case this is off-putting). Autobiographical, but not really confessional. There are also poems about his father much later in life when he (the father) was dying of prostate cancer. Marchant has done a beautiful job of delineating this complicated relationship. He's able to write honestly about his father, but in the end, with a largeness of spirit you'd have to call forgiveness.
Now the wind sounds out clearly
and says this is the mountain
of forgiveness, and hat the work
will be to traverse the empty spaces
with meaning.
from "The Afterlife on Squaw Peak"
In between are wartime poems and, actually, several poems with lovely descriptions of the natural world. I'm not a nature-poem kind of girl, but I could appreciate these.
A long poem set on Okinawa, 1970, took my breath away for a couple of seconds. I lived on Okinawa in 1970. So long ago, but whenever I think of it, I can still feel the atmosphere, the strangeness. And I can smell it. My most vivid memories seem to be permeated with both exotic and repellent odors. It made me shiver to read this. And I too have swum in the East China Sea. Marchant was a Marine lieutenant, before being honorably discharged as a conscientious objector. I was married to an Army private. But we were there on the island at the same time.
The book as a physical object pleased me, too. I like the thick cream paper and attractive font (that's not too small!).
I can't find any of these poems available online, though some poems from his other collections can be found at The Poetry Foundation website and the Frank Olson Legacy Project site.
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