Corridor: Poems

by Jonathan Aaron

Poetry that springs from the collision of memory, dream, and history.

Genres: Poetry

59 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1992

About the author

Jonathan Aaron lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is the author of three collections of poetry. His work has received many honors, including fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell. His poems, essays, and reviews have been widely published in periodicals including The Paris Review and The New York Review of Books and his poems have appeared five times in The Best American Poetry.

Reviews

[A.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Corridor is my first encounter with the poet Jonathan Aaron, and I really enjoyed this collection. He has a narrative style, each poem telling a story or relaying a dramatic scene or episode. There is even an underlying tension - as if something is going to happen - that kept me anxiously reading, though I was often left wondering what did happen - if anything. Was it "real" or imagined? Aaron's poetry is described as "surreal," which is probably why I enjoyed it.

Here is a taste:

Still Life Beside a Lake

Yes, everything's here, everything's right
where it should be, tranquil, luminous, sublime.
The wisdom of the ages, bread and books.
Not a hair on the nib of your pen;
you won't have to wipe it on your sleeve.
And you can be sure the wine cellar harbors only wine.
The elements present themselves - wind, stars, a storm.
But you're already dreaming up the names of sailing ships,
can't wait to get out of this place ...

Before you can say them aloud, or even sooner,
you're going to be running for your life,
like the pilgrim who fled Olympus because
he couldn't find a single goddess there.

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jonathan Aaron, Corridor (Wesleyan University Press, 1992)

My first thought about Corridor, Jonathan Aaron's second book, was "it's not as good as Second Sight (Jonathan Aaron's first book)." I kept reading, and while it's still fine stuff, nothing ever convinced me to give up that first impression.

Second Sight was a book that was full of good poems and great promise. Corridor is a book that is full of good poems, but the language here reflects an artist more set in his ways, for lack of a better way if putting it; there's less of the striking off into dangerous territory, less to make the reader work, less that will stop the reader and make him go back over the last few lines.

Don't get me wrong, this is still good stuff. But if you can, go back a few years and pick up Aaron's first book, Second Sight, instead. Read this one afterwards. ***