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Magnetic North
The New Yorker has written, “Gregerson’s rich aesthetic allows her best poems to resonate metaphysically.” In this new volume, Linda Gregerson makes clearer than ever her passionate premise that the metaphysical only and always derives from our profound embeddedness in physical reality.
From subjects as diverse as the Nazi occupation of Poland and a breakthrough discovery in cell biology, Gregerson seeks to distill "the shape of the question," the tenuous connection between knowing and suffering, between the brightness of the body and the shadows of the mind. "Choose any angle you like," she writes, "The world is split in two." One poem, "Bicameral," moves from a child's cleft palate to a gunshot wound to the hanging skeins of a fabric in a postwar art exhibit. In the wool cut from the sheep to make the materials of art, she finds a tangled record of violence and repair: "The body it becomes will ever / bind it to the human and a trail of woe."
Longtime readers of Gregerson's poetry will be facinated by her departure from the supple tercets in which she has worked for nearly twenty years: Magnetic North is a bold anthology of formal experiments. It is also a heartening act of sustained attention from one of our most mindful poets.
From subjects as diverse as the Nazi occupation of Poland and a breakthrough discovery in cell biology, Gregerson seeks to distill "the shape of the question," the tenuous connection between knowing and suffering, between the brightness of the body and the shadows of the mind. "Choose any angle you like," she writes, "The world is split in two." One poem, "Bicameral," moves from a child's cleft palate to a gunshot wound to the hanging skeins of a fabric in a postwar art exhibit. In the wool cut from the sheep to make the materials of art, she finds a tangled record of violence and repair: "The body it becomes will ever / bind it to the human and a trail of woe."
Longtime readers of Gregerson's poetry will be facinated by her departure from the supple tercets in which she has worked for nearly twenty years: Magnetic North is a bold anthology of formal experiments. It is also a heartening act of sustained attention from one of our most mindful poets.
- GenresPoetry
68 pages, Hardcover
First published March 6, 2007
4 people are currently reading
112 people want to read
About the author
Linda Gregerson
22 books20 followersLinda Gregerson is an American poet and member of faculty at the University of Michigan. She recieved her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. In 2014, she was named as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Linda Gregerson is the author of several collections of poetry and literary criticism. Also a Renaissance scholar, a classically trained actor, and a devotee of the sciences, she produces lyrical poems informed by her expansive reading that are inquisitive, unflinching, and tender.
Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for Waterborne
Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize finalist for The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep
2000 Guggenheim Fellowship
National Book Award finalist for Manetic North
Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for Waterborne
Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize finalist for The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep
2000 Guggenheim Fellowship
National Book Award finalist for Manetic North
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 14, 2024
In the small thing I wrote about this book when it first came out, I spent too much time talking about Gregerson's wonderfully complex sentences, and not enough about her thematic ambitions. This poet goes after all the marbles! Anyway, below is the little thing I wrote about mostly about her sentences:
Among the many virtues of U-M professor Linda Gregerson's poetry are its extraordinary sentences. Long and richly textured, they often start with precise observation, detour down the byways and digressions of thought, and end somewhere totally unexpected. For instance, in her new book, Magnetic North, she begins her poem "The Turning" with these lines, where sentence fights against line, and in the battle language gets intensely charged:
Just then, when already he's trying
to leave, improbably
young and fair-
complected, the absence of pigment a kind
of disease — he's come as a last
concession and the church
is cold, the other,
the pastor, so palpably wedded to grief he
looks with envy at the fair one, grief's
addictive, it will hitch
a ride on anything —
And the sentence is only half over!
This complexity is not just a kind of game. In Winter Light, the Bergman film on which "The Turning" is based, a young man on the brink of suicide comes to the church in a last effort to find hope, and the pastor fails him. But Gregerson recognizes the generosity in the suicide, who turns away rather than force the man of God to confront his own iniquities: "The turning/is a kind of tact."
The seriousness of this poem is typical of this book, the poet's fourth and an indication of the central position she has reached in contemporary American poetry. In many ways Magnetic North can be read as an extended meditation on mortality and the ways we come to terms with it. In this exploration Gregerson moves easily across the cultural map. The book begins with the image that dominates our decade — the collapse of the towers — and along the way incorporates words from a medieval text on falconry, an extended riff on St. Augustine, television evangelists, children's art created in German concentration camps, and several poems that engage the visual arts.
The collection ends with "Elegant," perhaps the best poem about science I have read in a long time. "Elegant" is hard to quote here because it moves all over the page, showing a new formal restlessness in a poet who has long been praised for her formal mastery. The poem's subject is the work done on a roundworm (C. elegans) that earned the Nobel Prize for three scientists in 2002; the Nobel Committee summarized their work as a discovery of "the genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death." As the poet tells us, "The world so rarely does." The poem becomes a meditation on the meaning of this work, how it connects us — through our mortality — to the world around us. Our very end becomes the "mother of beauty." Few poets are willing to make this kind of demand on their readers. Linda Gregerson does it magnificently.
https://annarborobserver.com/articles...
Among the many virtues of U-M professor Linda Gregerson's poetry are its extraordinary sentences. Long and richly textured, they often start with precise observation, detour down the byways and digressions of thought, and end somewhere totally unexpected. For instance, in her new book, Magnetic North, she begins her poem "The Turning" with these lines, where sentence fights against line, and in the battle language gets intensely charged:
Just then, when already he's trying
to leave, improbably
young and fair-
complected, the absence of pigment a kind
of disease — he's come as a last
concession and the church
is cold, the other,
the pastor, so palpably wedded to grief he
looks with envy at the fair one, grief's
addictive, it will hitch
a ride on anything —
And the sentence is only half over!
This complexity is not just a kind of game. In Winter Light, the Bergman film on which "The Turning" is based, a young man on the brink of suicide comes to the church in a last effort to find hope, and the pastor fails him. But Gregerson recognizes the generosity in the suicide, who turns away rather than force the man of God to confront his own iniquities: "The turning/is a kind of tact."
The seriousness of this poem is typical of this book, the poet's fourth and an indication of the central position she has reached in contemporary American poetry. In many ways Magnetic North can be read as an extended meditation on mortality and the ways we come to terms with it. In this exploration Gregerson moves easily across the cultural map. The book begins with the image that dominates our decade — the collapse of the towers — and along the way incorporates words from a medieval text on falconry, an extended riff on St. Augustine, television evangelists, children's art created in German concentration camps, and several poems that engage the visual arts.
The collection ends with "Elegant," perhaps the best poem about science I have read in a long time. "Elegant" is hard to quote here because it moves all over the page, showing a new formal restlessness in a poet who has long been praised for her formal mastery. The poem's subject is the work done on a roundworm (C. elegans) that earned the Nobel Prize for three scientists in 2002; the Nobel Committee summarized their work as a discovery of "the genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death." As the poet tells us, "The world so rarely does." The poem becomes a meditation on the meaning of this work, how it connects us — through our mortality — to the world around us. Our very end becomes the "mother of beauty." Few poets are willing to make this kind of demand on their readers. Linda Gregerson does it magnificently.
https://annarborobserver.com/articles...
December 3, 2017
“[A]s leaves / preserve the tree by learning / to relinquish it;” for me, these were the most striking lines of the book. It’s been a while since a poet has given me such pause, and I mean that as a complement. But, in this book overall, apprehending Linda Gregerson’s meaning or bent was often a true challenge, and I had to work myself up to the pursuit...
April 1, 2008
Linda Gregerson, Magnetic North (Houghton Mifflin, 2007)
I spent the first part of this book wondering what all the fuss was about, honestly; it's good, solid work, but there wasn't really anything that stood out, that really caused me to prick up my ears and take notice. Then, however, came the last section of the book. And when Magnetic North sings, it really takes off.
“You would/swear she hadn't a thought in her head/except for her buttermilk waffle and//its just proportion of jam. But while/she laughs and chews, half singing/with the lyrics on the radio, half//shrugging out of her bathrobe in the/kitchen warmth, she doesn't quite/complete the last part, one of the//sleeves—as though, you'd swear, she/couldn't be bothered—still covers/her arm. Which means you do not//see the cuts.” (“The Prodigal”)
It just goes along, and then whack, right in the face. But, as the poem goes on, there is nothing of castigation, nor-- and this is where it really gets interesting-- of curiosity. It just is; “she isn't stupid, she can see that we/who are children of plenty have no/excuse for suffering we//should be ashamed and so she is/and so she has produced this many-/layered hieroglyphic...”
If the entire volume had been at this level of intensity, it would have shot straight to the top of my beast reads of the year list. (Of course, it's highly probable that, in that case, no one else would have liked it all that much; such is the curse of being me.) I like its last twelve pages a great deal, however, and I'm certainly looking forward to seeing more of Linda Gregerson's work. ***
I spent the first part of this book wondering what all the fuss was about, honestly; it's good, solid work, but there wasn't really anything that stood out, that really caused me to prick up my ears and take notice. Then, however, came the last section of the book. And when Magnetic North sings, it really takes off.
“You would/swear she hadn't a thought in her head/except for her buttermilk waffle and//its just proportion of jam. But while/she laughs and chews, half singing/with the lyrics on the radio, half//shrugging out of her bathrobe in the/kitchen warmth, she doesn't quite/complete the last part, one of the//sleeves—as though, you'd swear, she/couldn't be bothered—still covers/her arm. Which means you do not//see the cuts.” (“The Prodigal”)
It just goes along, and then whack, right in the face. But, as the poem goes on, there is nothing of castigation, nor-- and this is where it really gets interesting-- of curiosity. It just is; “she isn't stupid, she can see that we/who are children of plenty have no/excuse for suffering we//should be ashamed and so she is/and so she has produced this many-/layered hieroglyphic...”
If the entire volume had been at this level of intensity, it would have shot straight to the top of my beast reads of the year list. (Of course, it's highly probable that, in that case, no one else would have liked it all that much; such is the curse of being me.) I like its last twelve pages a great deal, however, and I'm certainly looking forward to seeing more of Linda Gregerson's work. ***
March 30, 2013
As a person out of the north, I appreciate how Gregerson conveys a sense of winter beyond its season, its cold and silence palpable even in a narrative that suggests a preponderance of heat and noise as in "The Burning of Madrid as Seen from the Terrace of my House." "Spring Snow" exemplifies her ability to morph disparate narratives, one into the other. Here the melting of snow cover becomes the flensing of a skin off an animal.
Gregerson is like "the weaver" in "Bicameral" and this book, "her coat-of-many-harrowings." I am never very comfortable in these poems. The poet is meticulous in her descriptions: the training of a falcon, the search for the magnetic north, the mechanism of cell death. However,in these stark details, such as the careful sewing of the outer eye lid, avoiding the inner membrane, of the living falcon in "Make-Falcon," she reveals how ill-fitted we are in either the natural or made world, even as we try to make it fit. Yet, as the title suggests, we continue to orient ourselves by searching for the elusive source. In the final poem, "Elegant," we survive by following "the thread of in-the-cells remembering," though they, of necessity, fall away from us. Gregerson reminds us we are not far from the worms, in any sense.
Gregerson is like "the weaver" in "Bicameral" and this book, "her coat-of-many-harrowings." I am never very comfortable in these poems. The poet is meticulous in her descriptions: the training of a falcon, the search for the magnetic north, the mechanism of cell death. However,in these stark details, such as the careful sewing of the outer eye lid, avoiding the inner membrane, of the living falcon in "Make-Falcon," she reveals how ill-fitted we are in either the natural or made world, even as we try to make it fit. Yet, as the title suggests, we continue to orient ourselves by searching for the elusive source. In the final poem, "Elegant," we survive by following "the thread of in-the-cells remembering," though they, of necessity, fall away from us. Gregerson reminds us we are not far from the worms, in any sense.
January 3, 2021
I think this is a book that's often concerned with cold and suffering.
A message I sent to my friend:
Before that I sent:
But... horribly enough, I've come to appreciate the beauty of some of the results of the cold times. I learned the name of the tule fog, which settles in the Valley after it rains and the ground cools rapidly. The fog would form and I'd look on at it in awe, the thought in the back of my mind that the cold kills and the fog "is the leading cause of weather-related accidents in California" (Courtesy of WikiPedia). And in "Spring Snow," I was struck by the image of snow falling on "top / of the circular table like / risen cake." I almost missed snow & it made me think of the heinous shock of frost I saw on a sleeping bag left outdoors. How to deal with beauty and brutality (think Frederick II of Hohenstaufen: crusader-king and patron of the "poem of fourteen / lines"), how to deal with art and violence?
I also think it is a book that is often concerned with the shaping of the world, particularly into molds that are not (at least I think) a necessary evil, more like unnecessary evils. Gregerson writes in "Sweet," "beholding a world of harm, the mind / will apprehend some bringer-of-harm, / some cause, or course, / that might have been otherwise, had we possessed / the wit to see." And then after, this short, bold, beautiful line that I love: "Or ruthlessness. Or what? Or heart." Or heart... I mean, it bears repeating. Perhaps if we were a little more ruthless with our so-called reason, if we stopped writing off the heart as a dearth of knowledge... we may well be ethically and materially better off. The things we create for the temporary goal of outperforming the enemy (so potently examined in "Bicameral" and its relation of the military innovation of the "open nose" bullet) persist—and we and our friends and our children have to live with that persistence. Who wants a world riddled with more debilitating weapons, more cataclysmic danger, more ecological destruction, more human costs? Who wanted atomic bombs? I didn't. Did you?
When I read poetry, I often think of my sister, with whom I frequently end up talking politics. She corners me and tries to tease out plans for my alternatives to capitalism. I tell her that I'm not qualified to be the architect of global political economy. Is any one person, or one nation? At the edge of it all, all I want to tell her, which sometimes gets buried under "the-world-as-we've-made-it" is that perhaps our made-world out to be remade into something better. As I get older, a total, radical revolt seems more and more unlikely, and even damaging and unsustainable, at least with an immense human cost (Mary Shelley: "Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change."). Only, I don't want a world order that, with much fervor, strives to justify the existence of homelessness, exploitation, or poverty. I think sometimes she thinks, and sometimes other people think as well, that we want a world in which no one suffers. The world, as Gregerson observes & I'm inclined to believe, is "a world of harm"; is unfortunate, is fatal. But it doesn't mean we have to "apprehend" (A BRILLIANT WORD CHOICE!) "some bringer-of-harm." As our abilities to mitigate harm sharpen, why hide them behind the volatile frailty of our economics? Must we throw a beating heart into the volcano that appeases an invisible hand?
(She'd probably say that, philosophically, she agrees with me, but in the world of materials, things have to be done. I think there is a rigid acceptance of preventable human suffering in her hard-nosed realism, but then I'm only reproducing her in writing and not as an actual human being.)
I think what these poems really lead me to are an amor mundi. On the topic, Bard College's newsletter of the same name says: "Loving the world means neither uncritical acceptance nor contemptuous rejection, but the unwavering facing up to and comprehension of that which is." (I'm just realizing that it isn't an apprehension; it's a comprehension. More than likely, a life's work.) ❤️😊
I also have a new appreciation for the hyphen. 🙏
(If you can't tell, "Sweet" was my favorite of the collection. I also really enjoyed "Bicameral," "Make-Falcon," "Bright Shadow," "De Magnete," "My Father Comes Back From the Grave," "Prodigal," and "Elegant.")
A message I sent to my friend:
but the worst part is that they were outside. and it's freezing. and i don't know what to do really. and it just makes me think about how there are tons of homeless people outside. and it's freezing. and i don't know what to do! and there are empty houses but no one seems to care really. it's just so cruel. this is why i hate fall and winter because i just can't stop thinking about people who don't have the comforts i do and the people who die outside because it's cold. and the only way for your heart not to hurt is for it to get hard. or write a poem i guess i've been trying to write a poem to like process this lel
Before that I sent:
it's really hard because people just don't seem to care. not about me because i know people do but like about... just like the sum totality of everything that is our life. our planet. other human beings. plants and animals. no one seems to care or they just think it's like not their responsibility. which i guess could be true but it's just an attitude i can't vibe with any longer. and i feel like people feel like that especially in this country whew. look at the whole covid thing. but i'm sure it's like that everywhere
But... horribly enough, I've come to appreciate the beauty of some of the results of the cold times. I learned the name of the tule fog, which settles in the Valley after it rains and the ground cools rapidly. The fog would form and I'd look on at it in awe, the thought in the back of my mind that the cold kills and the fog "is the leading cause of weather-related accidents in California" (Courtesy of WikiPedia). And in "Spring Snow," I was struck by the image of snow falling on "top / of the circular table like / risen cake." I almost missed snow & it made me think of the heinous shock of frost I saw on a sleeping bag left outdoors. How to deal with beauty and brutality (think Frederick II of Hohenstaufen: crusader-king and patron of the "poem of fourteen / lines"), how to deal with art and violence?
I also think it is a book that is often concerned with the shaping of the world, particularly into molds that are not (at least I think) a necessary evil, more like unnecessary evils. Gregerson writes in "Sweet," "beholding a world of harm, the mind / will apprehend some bringer-of-harm, / some cause, or course, / that might have been otherwise, had we possessed / the wit to see." And then after, this short, bold, beautiful line that I love: "Or ruthlessness. Or what? Or heart." Or heart... I mean, it bears repeating. Perhaps if we were a little more ruthless with our so-called reason, if we stopped writing off the heart as a dearth of knowledge... we may well be ethically and materially better off. The things we create for the temporary goal of outperforming the enemy (so potently examined in "Bicameral" and its relation of the military innovation of the "open nose" bullet) persist—and we and our friends and our children have to live with that persistence. Who wants a world riddled with more debilitating weapons, more cataclysmic danger, more ecological destruction, more human costs? Who wanted atomic bombs? I didn't. Did you?
When I read poetry, I often think of my sister, with whom I frequently end up talking politics. She corners me and tries to tease out plans for my alternatives to capitalism. I tell her that I'm not qualified to be the architect of global political economy. Is any one person, or one nation? At the edge of it all, all I want to tell her, which sometimes gets buried under "the-world-as-we've-made-it" is that perhaps our made-world out to be remade into something better. As I get older, a total, radical revolt seems more and more unlikely, and even damaging and unsustainable, at least with an immense human cost (Mary Shelley: "Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change."). Only, I don't want a world order that, with much fervor, strives to justify the existence of homelessness, exploitation, or poverty. I think sometimes she thinks, and sometimes other people think as well, that we want a world in which no one suffers. The world, as Gregerson observes & I'm inclined to believe, is "a world of harm"; is unfortunate, is fatal. But it doesn't mean we have to "apprehend" (A BRILLIANT WORD CHOICE!) "some bringer-of-harm." As our abilities to mitigate harm sharpen, why hide them behind the volatile frailty of our economics? Must we throw a beating heart into the volcano that appeases an invisible hand?
(She'd probably say that, philosophically, she agrees with me, but in the world of materials, things have to be done. I think there is a rigid acceptance of preventable human suffering in her hard-nosed realism, but then I'm only reproducing her in writing and not as an actual human being.)
I think what these poems really lead me to are an amor mundi. On the topic, Bard College's newsletter of the same name says: "Loving the world means neither uncritical acceptance nor contemptuous rejection, but the unwavering facing up to and comprehension of that which is." (I'm just realizing that it isn't an apprehension; it's a comprehension. More than likely, a life's work.) ❤️😊
I also have a new appreciation for the hyphen. 🙏
(If you can't tell, "Sweet" was my favorite of the collection. I also really enjoyed "Bicameral," "Make-Falcon," "Bright Shadow," "De Magnete," "My Father Comes Back From the Grave," "Prodigal," and "Elegant.")
July 9, 2008
I will be meeting the poet on Thursday, and am very curious to ask her a few questions. I feel some of these poems are good, but I have the unshakable sensation that I am not quite 'getting it' whatever 'it' is.
January 21, 2008
I really admire Gregerson for breaking away from her tercets, but some of the poems here are hermetically sealed--I couldn't find a door.
March 17, 2025
"A river
of intelligence runs through us, could
the part we do on purpose do
less harm."
of intelligence runs through us, could
the part we do on purpose do
less harm."
October 30, 2007
Opened some doors for me. I'd love to read her earlier work... apparently it's more lyric?
July 18, 2017
not super accessible but interesting sounds and language use throughout. also, many references to historical events and people.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews