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Particles: New and Selected Poems
"Gerber has a gentle touch and an unaffected, articulate voice that can be smart, funny, wise—sometimes all at the same time."— Library Journal "[Gerber] is one of the most adept and accessible of the poets who explore the meaning of humans' relation with earth and existence itself."— ForeWord Into a frenzied world that hurtles ever faster somewhere, Dan Gerber's poetry offers a necessary and reflective presence . Drawing upon eight previous collections, and including a book-length selection of new poems, this retrospective tunes its senses to the natural world and a provenance that includes the influence of Buddhism, English Romanticism, and a deep reading of Rainer Maria Rilke's oeuvre. Pastoral and expansive, Gerber's poetry is concerned with the universe just outside each of our windows—the immediately viewable landscape in front of us and the mysterious vastness beyond. From "Dark Matter": The visible drapes itself around the invisible,
the way my jacket takes its shape from my shoulders.
An unseen gravity whirls
near the center of our galaxy,
an unseen heart near the center
of the bodies in which we desire.
I seldom think of Neptune out there, way beyond
my pointing to it on a summer night . . . Dan Gerber is the author of eight collections of poetry, three novels, a book of short stories, and two books of nonfiction. A former professional race-car driver, he has traveled extensively as a journalist, particularly in Africa. He lives in Santa Ynez, California.
the way my jacket takes its shape from my shoulders.
An unseen gravity whirls
near the center of our galaxy,
an unseen heart near the center
of the bodies in which we desire.
I seldom think of Neptune out there, way beyond
my pointing to it on a summer night . . . Dan Gerber is the author of eight collections of poetry, three novels, a book of short stories, and two books of nonfiction. A former professional race-car driver, he has traveled extensively as a journalist, particularly in Africa. He lives in Santa Ynez, California.
- GenresPoetry
288 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 1, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 20, 2018
In Particles: New and Selected Poems, Dan Gerber has chosen one of his new poems to serve as an epigraph for the collection and an inviting introduction:
FIRST LIGHT
Morning, busy in the the distance,
hammer blows, airplane in clouds.
Cows, muffled growling of a saw, steady pulse
of silence holding it together.
Pause between breathing in,
and out.
Thought of air thinking
day’s first light.
Foothills flaunting their ridges.
Losing the moment as I saw it;
finding it in its changes.
There, even before you come to the table of contents, you have Gerber’s hallmark attention and reflection, in perfect balance, and his welcome freedom from fashion or cant.
So go on in. In the title poem of the collection, you’ll come to this:
I don’t remember being born,
only the great dog
whose fur I clung to
before the first day of school.
The first line there might be read (I don’t insist) as a quiet rebuke to poets who blithely attempt what finally can’t be done. This is a poet for whom what can be done is quite enough. Here’s a section from “Letters to a Distant Friend”:
“Though tonight we are happy
we will come to grief
What of it
If we look for something endless
our lives w ill be endless looking
Why not settle for this
new wood on the fire
the moon in love
with the new-fallen snow
The second section of “Five Poems: Off the Beaten Track” begins as plainly as this:
“My dog barks,
announcing the arrival of Tuesday.”
Animals abound in Gerber’s work, and his perception of r the natural world, keen from the beginning and honed over his career, informs poem after poem. In “A Theory of Wind,” after dramatically following the aural and visual effects of wind on leaves and branches (I’m oversimplifying), Gerber concludes with this:
“If you get down close to the ground now you will hear
how the normally complacent grass
is also infected.
You’ve seen it fan out in great sweeps
like a blush on the face of the sea.”
Go to a library or bookstore and take Gerber’s book off the shelf. Try his “The Third Week of July” or “Snow on the Backs of Animals” or “Speaking to Horses.” Surely you’ll want the book.
I was moved when I came to “To Jim from the River,” which is dedicated to Gerber’s lifelong friend, the late American poet Jim Harrison. And there on the back cover of the book is Harrison’s tribute to Gerber, including: “When our age passes, this work will remain.”
I so hope readers who are still open to poetry will get to encounter the vital and saving work of Dan Gerber.
FIRST LIGHT
Morning, busy in the the distance,
hammer blows, airplane in clouds.
Cows, muffled growling of a saw, steady pulse
of silence holding it together.
Pause between breathing in,
and out.
Thought of air thinking
day’s first light.
Foothills flaunting their ridges.
Losing the moment as I saw it;
finding it in its changes.
There, even before you come to the table of contents, you have Gerber’s hallmark attention and reflection, in perfect balance, and his welcome freedom from fashion or cant.
So go on in. In the title poem of the collection, you’ll come to this:
I don’t remember being born,
only the great dog
whose fur I clung to
before the first day of school.
The first line there might be read (I don’t insist) as a quiet rebuke to poets who blithely attempt what finally can’t be done. This is a poet for whom what can be done is quite enough. Here’s a section from “Letters to a Distant Friend”:
“Though tonight we are happy
we will come to grief
What of it
If we look for something endless
our lives w ill be endless looking
Why not settle for this
new wood on the fire
the moon in love
with the new-fallen snow
The second section of “Five Poems: Off the Beaten Track” begins as plainly as this:
“My dog barks,
announcing the arrival of Tuesday.”
Animals abound in Gerber’s work, and his perception of r the natural world, keen from the beginning and honed over his career, informs poem after poem. In “A Theory of Wind,” after dramatically following the aural and visual effects of wind on leaves and branches (I’m oversimplifying), Gerber concludes with this:
“If you get down close to the ground now you will hear
how the normally complacent grass
is also infected.
You’ve seen it fan out in great sweeps
like a blush on the face of the sea.”
Go to a library or bookstore and take Gerber’s book off the shelf. Try his “The Third Week of July” or “Snow on the Backs of Animals” or “Speaking to Horses.” Surely you’ll want the book.
I was moved when I came to “To Jim from the River,” which is dedicated to Gerber’s lifelong friend, the late American poet Jim Harrison. And there on the back cover of the book is Harrison’s tribute to Gerber, including: “When our age passes, this work will remain.”
I so hope readers who are still open to poetry will get to encounter the vital and saving work of Dan Gerber.
February 3, 2018
I want to write a much longer review of this excellent collection, but I'm still meditating on it.. Here are parts of the Berkeley Times review that appears 8 February, 2018: “I can’t get enough of this moment,” (p. 155) Gerber writes five years ago, caressing his luxury of silence, elderhood and curiosity; sensitively praying the coyotes in the next valley aren’t savaging “the wounded fawn I saw” the day before. (p. 157) He’s not febrile in the least, though; almost too earthbound, granular, myopic; hauling hay, fishing and always aware of “The thirty-nine geese/ and the shadows of thirty-nine geese;” (p. 32) “composing my love letter to Earth, / in all her beauty and affliction.” (p. 236) Mortality and fallibility lie under it all: Indian Mounds, drowned horses, “WWII,” the murderousness of men, the “skulls…on which no life can be rebuilt.” (p. 76)
“Something is passing between us… something that holds us/ together, something like music, something we might carry to/ another life, like the sound of a human voice talking,” (p. 125) Gerber says, recollecting disengaging from a beloved mortal soul. This is art. This is poetry. This is life as a human being.
“Something is passing between us… something that holds us/ together, something like music, something we might carry to/ another life, like the sound of a human voice talking,” (p. 125) Gerber says, recollecting disengaging from a beloved mortal soul. This is art. This is poetry. This is life as a human being.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews