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In a Pig's Eye
Very good
- GenresPoetry
73 pages, Paperback
First published December 12, 1980
3 people want to read
About the author
Robert Siegel
76 books17 followersRobert Harold Siegel was an American poet and novelist. He authored four books of poetry and five children's novels.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 22, 2020
How can there be so few reviews here of the work of so great a poet!? Literary and poetry magazines in the late twentieth century certainly took notice of Siegel's poems, and notable US poets and men of letters were big fans (F.D.Reeve, Richard Eberhart, etc), but alas, Goodreads readers have yet to discover him...
Opening with eight poems about pigs, including the sinister-cutesy 'A Lady who Lov'd a Swine', several other comfortably grotesque numbers, and the neat, brief 'White Sow of Marengo', suitably epigraphed and bursting with RS' delightful metaphor and curious perspective --
This little pig stayed home
Cloud of flesh
you pin the field down
so it won't rise, rip out the seam of trees
and flap over the swamp to Chicago.
You turn the light to milk
and happily lie
dozing toward China, lending the earth
the gross momentum of your bulk.
As I pass, an incurious eye
follows my head above the fence,
and five chins smile at one
who
unlike you and the sun
drags a flickering shadow across the earth.
Part two contains several other very odd, almost sinister poems about mysterious presences (one called 'Them' inspired by the spine-tingliest limerick around, "There are men in the village of Erith / Whom nobody seeth or heareth. / And there looms on the marge / Of the river, a barge / That nobody roweth or steereth.") and plenty of RS' characteristic observations of nature, and remembrances of semi-rural life, in which the odd creatures are showcased ('Proboscis Monkey', 'Muskie', 'River Snake' et al) and evenings buying and smelling (yes, smelling) carloads of apples or hot days watching a farmer at work (doubling up as a riff on biblical objects like gold, frankinsence and myrrh) are recalled and celebrated. For a nature poet, RS is incredibly tender when it comes to portraying eccentrics, or the weak, and 'Simple Simon' and 'Hans and His Wife' are deeply moving.
Part three's poems, ending with a great hymn, 'Rinsed with Gold, Endless, Walking the Fields', are all about plants, though of course they are "about" so much more than that. Seigel repays frequent re-reading, and chewing. And there are a few poems in this collection that I don't "get" yet so I will return.
Opening with eight poems about pigs, including the sinister-cutesy 'A Lady who Lov'd a Swine', several other comfortably grotesque numbers, and the neat, brief 'White Sow of Marengo', suitably epigraphed and bursting with RS' delightful metaphor and curious perspective --
This little pig stayed home
Cloud of flesh
you pin the field down
so it won't rise, rip out the seam of trees
and flap over the swamp to Chicago.
You turn the light to milk
and happily lie
dozing toward China, lending the earth
the gross momentum of your bulk.
As I pass, an incurious eye
follows my head above the fence,
and five chins smile at one
who
unlike you and the sun
drags a flickering shadow across the earth.
Part two contains several other very odd, almost sinister poems about mysterious presences (one called 'Them' inspired by the spine-tingliest limerick around, "There are men in the village of Erith / Whom nobody seeth or heareth. / And there looms on the marge / Of the river, a barge / That nobody roweth or steereth.") and plenty of RS' characteristic observations of nature, and remembrances of semi-rural life, in which the odd creatures are showcased ('Proboscis Monkey', 'Muskie', 'River Snake' et al) and evenings buying and smelling (yes, smelling) carloads of apples or hot days watching a farmer at work (doubling up as a riff on biblical objects like gold, frankinsence and myrrh) are recalled and celebrated. For a nature poet, RS is incredibly tender when it comes to portraying eccentrics, or the weak, and 'Simple Simon' and 'Hans and His Wife' are deeply moving.
Part three's poems, ending with a great hymn, 'Rinsed with Gold, Endless, Walking the Fields', are all about plants, though of course they are "about" so much more than that. Seigel repays frequent re-reading, and chewing. And there are a few poems in this collection that I don't "get" yet so I will return.
Displaying 1 of 1 review