This forthcoming collection features some of prolific poet Seymour Mayne's best poems in years. After more than six decades of writing, and with more than 70 publications to his credit, he is showing no signs of slowing down, even as there is a melancholic undertone to many of the poems, ruminations on the approaching dusk, the fading light of the sun in the moments as it reaches over the horizon line. I love these poems best, they are rich with depth and gilded imagery, like this image from "Kin", reminding us that our personal journey is a continuation of the journey of our departed forbearers:
And their words
were few, nothing
to exclaim
over the kindred horizon
as now, mute,
they sleep
dozens of yards apart,
each in the raft
of his crumbling coffin.
I did not know my grandfather, a Polish immigrant who crossed the ocean in 1907. And my father, who grew up in relative poverty, was a man of few words and was preoccupied, as many of that first generation were, with making sure our family was materially well provided for, and it was. This poem reminds us that their story speaks through ours.
And in other poems like "Never a Dull Moment" the poet engages humorously with themes that are quintessentially and uniquely Mayne, the Almighty, the muse of Jewish tradition, the absurdities and follies of human existence, and the inadequacy and impulse of language:
No language can contain
our need to speak – and how
we talk, debating silence
and eternity with words
that trace God’s handiwork
no matter how flawed.
One of my favourites is the word sonnet "Afterword", once again demonstrating Mayne's mastery of this unreasonably concise form with a startling image:
The
word
arrives
a
bit
late
but
the
door
lingers
ajar
on
its
hinges.
It accomplishes exactly what it needs to without waste, and leaves the door open, as it were, to anxious feelings hinging on an image that may be an arrival or an exit, and suggests an ominous presence of anticipatory emotion.
I can hardly think of a more succinct or apt description of life’s third act than "Rescue Mission":
Now
it
is
a
rescue
mission,
drifting
into
the
senior
zone,
with
life
preservers.
But Mayne is far from done. He's got plenty of piss and vinegar, as my mother used to say, plenty of injustice to rage against poetically as the prophets of old. As in the poem "Generations", from the section Bucharest Poems:
One generation enjoys
the earth with its bounties
and the next is full
of ancient rage
against the neighbours,
against the soothing cross,
against the quiet
of fearful mortality.
The destroyers wait their turn
like perennials sleeping
before blossom and bloom.
This is May, the month
of joy and desire.
Take it with both hands
before the slaying
begins in earnest again.
If this collection is any indication, Mayne obviously has a lot more to say poetically. And in these turbulent times, there’s plenty to be outraged about, so thank g-d for that.
