Synopses & Reviews
Quixotic in his hapless drive to know everything in a world where nature itself is elusive, the narrator of these 95 free-verse poems struggles with his impulse to study and think when there is little that can be understood as language can be deceiving and history proposes and then disposes its patterns. Looking for a hidden order and raising big questions in his wake, the narrator takes on the universe, human nature, and the meaning of it all.
Synopsis
In a series of ninety-five poems we listen to 'the Reasoner', a voice that is by turns ardent, despairing and comic. Petty obsessions rub against attempts at philosophical seriousness; vernacular expression vies with an intent deliberation. Above all, the Reasoner is worried. He has cherished the notion that, with thought and study, the world may be understood. But the world remains recalcitrant, elusive even in simple things like the trickeries of light on a spider's web. Language plays tricks, although it may be as complete as we can manage. History proposes and disposes of its patterns. Behind all this there may be a 'hidden order' - and that is both a hope and a fear.
Does God help us to understand any of this? Does Art? Is the 'soul' a sanctuary? The Reasoner, the reader, 'smiles ruefully and soldiers on', 'for this is not a wicked but a hard world, / and people struggle, without a scheme of things, / and deserve release.'
About the Author
Jeffrey Wainwright is the author of the poetry collections Clarity or Death!, Heart's Desire, Out of the Air, and The Red-Handed Pupil and two books of criticism, Acceptable Words: Essays on the Poetry of Geoffrey Hill and Poetry: The Basics. He is a former professor at Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Wales, and Long Island University.