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World Tree
World Tree is in many respects, David Wojahn’s most ambitious collection to date; especially notable is a 25-poem sequence of ekphrastic poems, “Ochre,” which is accompanied by a haunting series of drawings and photographs of Neolithic Art and anonymous turn of the last century snapshots.
Wojahn continues to explore the themes and approaches which he is known for, among them the junctures between the personal and political, a giddy mixing of high and pop culture references, and a deep emotional engagement with whatever material he is writing about.
Winner of the 2012 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets
Wojahn continues to explore the themes and approaches which he is known for, among them the junctures between the personal and political, a giddy mixing of high and pop culture references, and a deep emotional engagement with whatever material he is writing about.
Winner of the 2012 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets
- GenresPoetry
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 28, 2017
Fave poem: World Tree about death/family. Loved section III with the black and white accompanying photos. Superb visuals to go with the verse. Appreciate that he thanks dead wife and fellow poet Lynda Hull (1994) in Acknowledgements. Poem Rolltop about her?
June 1, 2011
Private places and public spaces--Wojahn uses verse to explore nuances of a distinctly diverse choice of settings. Investigating the variances of humanity, all the forms of beauty and ugliness, he paints a picture sometimes brutal, and sometimes impossibly sweet. From the beginning of one poem to the end, you're never entirely sure of the destination. Many times I was intrigued at just how much emotion he evokes in a few choice phrases.
Designed in four sections, World Tree is a play on the concept of 'family tree'. He extends the meaning to show the inner dependency we have on people throughout the world, whether we like it or not. He illustrates the poems with an assortment of unusual graphics-the choices that serve as inspiration for some of the poems. This is called ekphrastic poetry, using art or visual images to inspire the poem. In some cases the poems are a reactionary response to the visual medium, at other times an attempt to explain the meaning or setting of the piece. Or, as in some of the photographs Wojahn uses, the poem reveals hidden meaning behind the scenes. Cave paintings and excavated archaelogical finds also provide potent ideas that Wojahn explores.
In one, "The Killed Man", he uses a cave painting that is thousands of years old. He ties the old to the new in his imagination, making the ancient appear far more relevant than if observed on a museum wall:
"The stick man bristles with five sticks
& his insides pour out, a mesh of ochre,
Rendered childlike. The invention of torture
Is so fresh they are confounded.
How to depict
The human figure mangled, the whole reduced
To the gutted sum of its parts...
They keep you chained & hooded on the flight
From Kabul to Gitmo. They serve a meal
Of rubber hoses, then another. The shackles
Gnaw at your wrists & ankles."
The basic image moves into the present, with the not-so-unfamiliar image of a tortured prisoner. Has time not changed man's brutality? Is there progress evident?
In "Trepanned Skull of a Woman with a Prosthetic Seashell Ear", he uses the fascinating photo of the shell ear (amazingly true to life) to examine the mystery behind it:
"The facts: someone made a drill of flint
& bore into her cranium for hours,
a procedure
She survived, living on some twenty years.
Someone fashioned a device with which she might detect
The wave-crash of a sea three hundred miles away,
Worked shell to a phosphorescent simulacrum
Of auricle & cartilage, a lobe she'd worry
Until her fingers rubbed it smooth as skin.
Of untold mysteries we are composed....
...& was affliction cured?
&did she prophesize-oracle, priestess, sphinx?
Wounded goddess, did she unclasp her shell-ear as she lay down to dream?"
In the fourth section, Wojahn's focus is more on the public spaces and modern history, with references to the King of Pop, the Haiti earthquakes, and the endless 'crawl' of bad news on CNN. His "Letter to Eadweard Muybridge" mingles details from the photographers 19th century life with present events, and shows that not much has changed. "In the Domed Stadium" employs the colors of gray, black, rust, and crimson along with words like sizzling, jeering, rippled, and twitching to create a nightmare scene from the inside of the Louisiana Superdome after Katrina.
"Nocturne: Newark Airport" is my favorite. Passengers are delayed due to snow, and the airport shuts down around them. It's a "ghost dance" that appears, as some try to sleep, others try to read or explore the empty terminal. The abandonment takes away the individuality of each person and makes it far more of an anonymous sea of blank faces. Unity at last-all helpless to the power of the weather-leaving only a mute television scrolling death tolls that no one bothers to count.
This collection is poignant and deep...many of the references required me to look up some of them online to define and understand. The way he ties abstract concepts to concrete images and responses is something that deepens this collection beyond what is typical. It's one to read again....
Designed in four sections, World Tree is a play on the concept of 'family tree'. He extends the meaning to show the inner dependency we have on people throughout the world, whether we like it or not. He illustrates the poems with an assortment of unusual graphics-the choices that serve as inspiration for some of the poems. This is called ekphrastic poetry, using art or visual images to inspire the poem. In some cases the poems are a reactionary response to the visual medium, at other times an attempt to explain the meaning or setting of the piece. Or, as in some of the photographs Wojahn uses, the poem reveals hidden meaning behind the scenes. Cave paintings and excavated archaelogical finds also provide potent ideas that Wojahn explores.
In one, "The Killed Man", he uses a cave painting that is thousands of years old. He ties the old to the new in his imagination, making the ancient appear far more relevant than if observed on a museum wall:
"The stick man bristles with five sticks
& his insides pour out, a mesh of ochre,
Rendered childlike. The invention of torture
Is so fresh they are confounded.
How to depict
The human figure mangled, the whole reduced
To the gutted sum of its parts...
They keep you chained & hooded on the flight
From Kabul to Gitmo. They serve a meal
Of rubber hoses, then another. The shackles
Gnaw at your wrists & ankles."
The basic image moves into the present, with the not-so-unfamiliar image of a tortured prisoner. Has time not changed man's brutality? Is there progress evident?
In "Trepanned Skull of a Woman with a Prosthetic Seashell Ear", he uses the fascinating photo of the shell ear (amazingly true to life) to examine the mystery behind it:
"The facts: someone made a drill of flint
& bore into her cranium for hours,
a procedure
She survived, living on some twenty years.
Someone fashioned a device with which she might detect
The wave-crash of a sea three hundred miles away,
Worked shell to a phosphorescent simulacrum
Of auricle & cartilage, a lobe she'd worry
Until her fingers rubbed it smooth as skin.
Of untold mysteries we are composed....
...& was affliction cured?
&did she prophesize-oracle, priestess, sphinx?
Wounded goddess, did she unclasp her shell-ear as she lay down to dream?"
In the fourth section, Wojahn's focus is more on the public spaces and modern history, with references to the King of Pop, the Haiti earthquakes, and the endless 'crawl' of bad news on CNN. His "Letter to Eadweard Muybridge" mingles details from the photographers 19th century life with present events, and shows that not much has changed. "In the Domed Stadium" employs the colors of gray, black, rust, and crimson along with words like sizzling, jeering, rippled, and twitching to create a nightmare scene from the inside of the Louisiana Superdome after Katrina.
"Nocturne: Newark Airport" is my favorite. Passengers are delayed due to snow, and the airport shuts down around them. It's a "ghost dance" that appears, as some try to sleep, others try to read or explore the empty terminal. The abandonment takes away the individuality of each person and makes it far more of an anonymous sea of blank faces. Unity at last-all helpless to the power of the weather-leaving only a mute television scrolling death tolls that no one bothers to count.
This collection is poignant and deep...many of the references required me to look up some of them online to define and understand. The way he ties abstract concepts to concrete images and responses is something that deepens this collection beyond what is typical. It's one to read again....
April 20, 2014
While there are some poems that simply try too hard and amass too many references for my taste, there is much that is fine in and about this volume by David Wojahn. At its best, references to personal and world history, current events and his family, and the universal arc of human life all interlace like the leaves of the World Tree that is one of his dominant analogies here.
January 16, 2013
Brilliant. Cohesive. Breadth and scope more than a little intriguing and much to my liking. Unlike some collections I've read lately, "World Tree" is a pleasure to savor through many readings.
May 23, 2013
What a gem. Edgy and widely-ranging poems. One of the best books of poetry I've read in years. "Ode to Black 6"
May 12, 2011
I like Wojahn-- his interest in rock music made his poems kind of a gateway for me into poetry, and I realy respect his taste. Of course, that's faint praise, and I've really enjoyed a lot of his poems over the years-- Mystery Train and Icehouse Lights are both really excellent collections, as are some of his more recent works whose titles slip my mind right now. This new book, though, isn't so great.
It is, in essence, a book of elegies. That shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, given Wojahn's experience (married to Linda Hull) and his fixation of old rock and roll-- his work has always been animated by a sense of belatedness. But this collection, aside from a solid batch of poems at the start of the second section, to me doesn't do much with that material. Really, my sense was that I'd read these poems before in other poems, by Wojahn, and that they were by and large better then. I think there must be a deliberate aim here, to linger in this mood for a book length, but it doesn't break through that to say something interesting, at least not to me.
It is, in essence, a book of elegies. That shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, given Wojahn's experience (married to Linda Hull) and his fixation of old rock and roll-- his work has always been animated by a sense of belatedness. But this collection, aside from a solid batch of poems at the start of the second section, to me doesn't do much with that material. Really, my sense was that I'd read these poems before in other poems, by Wojahn, and that they were by and large better then. I think there must be a deliberate aim here, to linger in this mood for a book length, but it doesn't break through that to say something interesting, at least not to me.
April 8, 2014
Such a disappointment to read a poet you have admired, and find a book that is politically predictable, short on imagination, and full of received notions.
Wojahn is the real thing, and I've loved earlier books. But this one is not at the same level. The social criticism is unsubtle and uninventive. The man in the suit next to him on a plane must therefore be in finance, simultaneously vapid and cunning. God forbid he should be an actual being with an actual soul. This sort of lazy cartooning is rampant.
The exception is the middle section, which contains poems based on ancient cave paintings and other interesting artifacts. Here, for some reason, the poet's creative faculties reawaken and there is freshness in language and idea.
Otherwise, I'd recommend re-reading one of his earlier ones.
Wojahn is the real thing, and I've loved earlier books. But this one is not at the same level. The social criticism is unsubtle and uninventive. The man in the suit next to him on a plane must therefore be in finance, simultaneously vapid and cunning. God forbid he should be an actual being with an actual soul. This sort of lazy cartooning is rampant.
The exception is the middle section, which contains poems based on ancient cave paintings and other interesting artifacts. Here, for some reason, the poet's creative faculties reawaken and there is freshness in language and idea.
Otherwise, I'd recommend re-reading one of his earlier ones.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews