Needlegrass

by Dennis Sampson

A collection of poetry by Dennis Sampson.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the sake of full disclosure, I must reveal that Dennis Sampson is a friend of mine. I've drunk his liquor, eaten his ribs and home-made apple pie, and chased his dog for two miles on foot on a hot summer night while doing a poor job of dog-sitting. Nonetheless, in hopes of establishing some integrity and impartiality as a reviewer, let me state that I am far too lazy to read a mediocre book of poems (or less), much less take the time out of my busy day to write a review. I know other poets whose work I've read, and Sampson's book is the first one I've felt moved to review (and he has no idea I'm dong this).

I suppose I could let myself off the hook by simply letting the work speak for itself. Here's my favorite poem from Needlegrass:

"What the Human Voice is For"

One summer,
in a theater in Cleveland,
during a scene in a movie I can't recall
where Burt Reynolds was being punished,
he put out his hands,
spread wide to show all ten fingers
to his torturer,
while a cluster of teenagers twittered and guffawed
until a man in the back shouted
"There is nothing funny about suffering
so shut up."
The silence, the silence of the saved,
then the tease
of waiting for one of those kids to say
what he would regret.
I remember the strength
I took from that,
that I understood what the human voice
was for.

So why is it this hard to ask one simple blessing
nights when I am driven to the edge
by what I could have done
if only I had been someone other than who I am?

I want the soul to be a fragrance
of pine and wind
before the storm. Let it pass
through what in me remains betrayed.
I want the soul to know
and lead me there.

This poem exhibits some basic qualities of a Sampson poem: starts with a memory of a seemingly simple event, one with a bit of dramatic tension, in which the speaker's voice shifts into a reflective tone that ends up in a quietly transcendantal moment, a moment often evoked with an appeal to nature. There's often a spiritual current in the work, but a current presented in direct emotion. The speaker in a Sampson tends to be hard on himself, honestly revealing his own flaws, but without lapsing into the near hysterical confessional mode of Plath or Lowell or Ginsberg.

Many of the poems in this collection are set in Sampson's home state of South Dakota, and perhaps it's the stark beauty of that naked landscape that has influenced his credo of self-examination conducted with candor but rooted in the concrete world of nature, the "fragrance of pine and wood / before the storm." Listen closely, and it won't take long to hear some echoes of Frost, but with more hope and sympathy than the Frost of, say, "The Most of It" or "Home Burial." He's probably closer in spirit to Theodore Roethke's "Night Journey" and "Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidte and Frau Schwartze."
The Whitman of "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking."

The speaker in a Sampson poem may indulge his solitude to the near point of stoicism, but never at the expense of a daily commitment and renewal to embracing whatever the next day and eternal land offer him. For proof of this, read "To the Living Wind":

Cattle in a cold wind. Then crows floating
over the stubble field -- a stake
being driven into the earth by a man
with nothing but answers in his hand.

I have studied the possibilities and I know
if sweet clover turned black in the middle
of May and the fox responded to prayer
the day would still contain the uncontrollable

sound of someone lifting and pulling --
long after the sun topped the buttes --
a sledgehammer with such force
you would think a fissure had opened up in the loam

letting go the dead. Go out over the fields. Go alone.
This is your history. This is where you begin.


Oh, hell, conflict of interest be damned. These poems have earned their 5 stars. This man deserves a wider audience.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 S192n 2005