A BOOK FOR HIM ON YOUR GIFT LIST

NAMING THE CONSTELLATIONS New Poems by John Thomas York is at the top of my list of  recommended books you will want to put on your shopping list. This is a book that will please any reader.  I can guarantee that the men on your list will like these poems.  Three specific men who read and raved about these poems are: Fred Chappell, Mark Smith-Soto and Al Maginnes. Their endorcements from the back cover of the book are reprinted below. The book has 36 pages and was published at Spring Street Editions, Sylva, NC in collaboration with Ash Creek Press, Portland, OR. 


There were a number of poems I liked. The publisher said I could choose one to reprint. That was not easy for me. I liked
"The Gift" his mother poem and "Puzzle" his father poem. The title poem, "Naming the Constellations" is excellent. I liked many but finally chose " The Loon." It is reprinted for you.

The Loon

  When full the reservoir is 10-feet deep and contains 18,000,000

gallons of water. This deluge of liquid is kept within bounds by an

exterior wall of reinforced concrete. . .A division wall divides the

basin into two sections, so that one section may be drained for repairs

without impairing service.

– Greensboro Daily News, August 4, 1929

Before the city covered the Lake Daniel Reservoir,

before they erected a concrete

roof and filled in most of the other half,

leaving a grassy yard and a pond for the geese,

I enjoyed walking the road around the impoundment:

standing outside the chain-link fence,

I could feel the water’s weight as the beast

heaved against the walls of the pool,

the water lapping against the sides and the wall

across the middle, the animal

sighing, rippling its skin, as it rubbed against its cage.

One day, when the water was quiet, full of clouds, leafing

hardwoods, dogwood and locust blossom,

I saw a loon swimming--the Great Northern Diver!

breaking the surface in places unexpected,

staying under, staying under, like something

I wanted to say, something that refused

to come at my calling,

until, there it was, splashing-flapping-running

over the surface: but it stopped in a hush,

stymied by the wall across the middle

and the circle of chain link—topped by rows

of rusty barbs, where sparrows and finches

chirped about their business, gathering

and going as they pleased.

And I saw the loon’s peril,

this bird caught in a concrete trap, a reservoir

in a southern city, far from the lakes of the North Woods,

the White Mountains, the Adirondacks,

a pool that looked fine from a distance,

full of cloud and tree shadow—

Maybe the loon—this bird unafraid

of foraging 100 feet below

the surface, enduring enormous pressure,

this migrant flying high and fast, all the way

from Walden Pond to the Gulf Coast

and back again before summer, proclaiming its presence

during mating season with the crooning and laughter

of a maniac, but otherwise given to long bouts of silence,

small wings and feet way back built for propelling,

making the bird a stumblebum on the common shore—

maybe the loon was a failed poet,

the reincarnation of one who disregarded his muse,

a writer too lazy to leave his pond, the wavering reflections,

too timid to go below the surface and, therefore,

condemned to rebirth as a loon,

a squid, a sperm whale, many lives, many

years, before he could pick up a pencil and try again.

I don’t know if the loon escaped Lake Daniel Reservoir:

after two days of heavy rain, the bird was gone.

Maybe it died and went down a drain,

the loon sucked into our drinking water,

strained and purified, until a loony essence

rushed from our taps, giving the whole city

a fleeting hunger for crawdads,

grasshoppers, trout, mackerel, perch;

an inexplicable desire to turn off TVs and computers

and pick up Hamlet, The Waste Land,

or Dickinson’s Collected Poems,

(or maybe even The Spoon River Anthology,

“Invictus,” or The Weary Blues”);

or an urge to snatch legal pads and write sonnets,

prose poems, terza rima, villanelles,

or to sit by the banks of Lake Brandt

and wait for the flights of eagles, cloud bursts,

or a single haiku, chiming at moonrise.

But I’d like to think that the heavy rain

raised the water level, or somebody at the waterworks

turned a wheel and filled the reservoir until the wall

across the middle disappeared: I hope the loon,

taking a careful measure of things, found the right angle,

enough room for a run for the sky, the bird

leaving nothing but a silver wake, the long signature of persistence.

--by John Thomas York

(Critical Comment from the back cover)
Fred Chappell writes: "These Poems by John Thomas York recall to vivid life a mode of existence that has well nigh disappeared. His pliant lyricism is born from a deep love of country things, county people  and the country itself in the widest meaning of that term.  It is a country the poet says he did not return to, "for the land lives in me, the kingdom come." That's true--and what a grand kingdom it is!"

Mark Smith-Soto writes: "Ever mindful of natural wonders, rooted in the realities of a country boyhood whose shaping influence resounds through every line, and suffused with a melancholy that is never morbid or self-pitying, this little book contains more real poetry than most full-length volumes I have read of late. Naming the Constellations offers rare gifts: the cadence of a voice that never tires the ear, and the eye of a man accustomed to seeing the glow around common things."

Al Maginnes writes: "While the poems of Naming the Constellations have their feet firmly planted "between young corn and shining gravel," they are always gazing beyond, to "the Big Dipper's cup, over to Polaris, the penny nail on which the Little Dipper swings." These poems, while rooted in their narrator's rural upbringing, also "dream through the years," so they are simultaneously elegy and celebration. This is a strong collection that will reward many readings."

Click to buy this book at CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE.

http://www.citylightsnc.com/book/9780971204638