Adjust Your Set by Linda Stitt

It's been a long time since I tried to review a book of poetry, which I don't think was ever my strong suit. As a matter of fact, in 2010 I didn't even read a single book of poetry, so reviewing one would be impossible.

As regular readers know, I'm trying to change that here in 2011, with a goal of reading roughly at least one poetry book a month. I'm aided in this by my pile of random poetry books that I grabbed over the past few years. Whenever I found them for a few bucks here and there, I'd peek at a few pages and see if the lines looked interesting. If they did, they ended up in my shopping basket.

This is not the best way to get excellent poetry, as I've discovered. It does, however, expose you to some interesting books. Adjust Your Set is pretty typical of the three I've tried so far (one of which was terrible and I stopped reading it). There are some awesome poetical moments, but the overall feel is just too uneven to make it a keeper.

Linda Stitt is apparently an older poet who has a few books out prior to this one. At the point this book is collected, she's reflecting on her life and what it means to be an older woman in society. When she's doing this, the results are often quite insightful. She talks about how she's less interested in sex or how she lived her life according to the rules and that it didn't get her anywhere. Other poems discuss her ex-husband (who presumably left her for a younger woman) or coming to grips with the ravages of time.

The concepts are perfect fodder for poetry. The problem is that Stitt tries too often to force her ideas into rhyme schemes, which take the good idea and torture it like humans do with a cat and a laser pointer. Like the cat who can't ever catch the bobbing light, Stitt can't capture the right feel when the seriousness of the verse is undermined by the need to Seussify her thoughts. The rhymes work okay when it is simply a stanza-long idea, but anything longer than that loses me in the sing-song nature of the words.

That's a shame because her free verse is quite good. In a poem about being forced into technology by her children (My New Literacy), Stitt discusses how her very poetry becomes stuff in the act of making it conform to the new computer she can write on. "The Matricide" is far too heavy-handed for my taste, but in the free verse format, Stitt clearly shows she can make allusions via her verse (in this case, that humanity is killing Mother Earth).

"Artifact" is a good example of what I mean:

I was offered a paint-by-the-numbers life
of circumscribed colours and designs,
with traditional patterns, nice and neat,
but I couldn't stay within the lines.

So I scribbled outside my social class,
my duties as mother and wife,
and I scrawled my name on experience.
It may not be art, but it's my life.

And often it stirs me into the crowd
and sometimes it sets me far apart.
It spatters my sense with splashes of bliss
and dashes love's pigments into my heart
and I am quite content with this
untidy life, my artless art.

That's a great way of artistically saying you didn't quite fit the mold. Unfortunately, there are also poems like "Forewarning" which starts thusly:

Look away from beauty,
beauty is to fear.
Beauty grabs you by the heart
and hauls you over here.
Beauty grabs you by the gut
and hurls you over there;
beauty shatters you to bits
and spreads you everywhere.

That seems like the chorus of a 1980s power ballad by a lesser hair-metal band, and the rest of the page-long poem doesn't get any better.

Overall, the good and bad match up roughly equally, making it hard for me to make a final judgment on this book. I think whether or not you'll be interested depends just how much you like rhymed poems. (I once knew a person who only liked rhymed verse, and considered anything else chopped up prose.) If you like or tolerate it, Adjust Your Set might be worth seeking out if you find a copy somewhere. If you are not a fan, then there's going to be too many pages you'll want to skip. I fall somewhere in-between. Adjust Your Set was good enough to finish, but I don't know that I'd actively look for more poems by Stitt.

Want to sample some of Adjust Your Set? A few preview pages are on Google Books.

Domestic Interior by Stepanie Brown

I like reading personal poetry, but it can sometimes be a a tricky world. There's a lot to be said for the reading of verse that is close to the author's heart. You can see their pain and joys, their trials and triumphs, and what's most important to them.

The thing is, if the author is not careful, these reflections can end up sounding like a long string of negatives, as though their life is nothing but misery.

When you're a multiple times published poet who received an NEA fellowship and run a library, it's hard for me to understand why you think you life is so bad that your poetry reads like a person who is at the end of their rope.

That's the case in "Domestic Interior," a collection of poems that, to me, is just too depressing and makes Ms. Brown's life seem to be one of problem after problem. And those problems just aren't real issues.

In a poem called "Private School," the focus of the poem complains about having to bid on art from children in the name of charity, paying outrageous prices. Another poem complains about a wonderful property that is apparently spoiled because it won't allow a certain flower to grow. "Education" makes it seem like Brown's liberal arts education was torture, because she was having someone show her rare Octavos from the 1500s.

I just wasn't able to relate to any of this. These problems are those many would kill to have, and to see them put on display like this just shows, to me, how banal they are. If the point is to show how awful it is that these are the concerns of upper class Americans, then I bow to her ability to fool me, because I just didn't get that impression. The personal links thrown in make them seem like these are Brown's real concerns.

Domestic Interior just didn't work for me at all. If it was meant ironically, I didn't get it. If it was meant to be serious, then I'm sorry to hear that. If Brown wants to learn what it's like to really suffer, I suggest she give up some of the things she's so unhappy about and spend more time with kids who can't afford a private school and wouldn't be allowed within 50 feet of a rare book. That's a real tragedy, and would certainly make for more interesting poetry.

Olson's Penny Arcade by Elder Olson

I'm afraid I can't find an image of this book to save my life, which is a shame because that's what attracted me to it in a random library grab. The cover depicts what I believe is supposed to be an old penny movie viewer, where you turn a crank and the photos inside move rather like a flip book.

You don't have to turn a crank to get the poetry inside started, fortunately. All you have to do is turn the page. Inside, you'll find a set of four sections, two that offer a variety of poems, one with a set of themed poems, and another that is a short play in verse.

Mr. Olson says that, "If these poems range from jocosity yo fury and near suicidal despair, that is because they reflect the kind of person I happen to be and the kind of world we happen to live in." I think that's a pretty accurate accounting of the contents, even allowing for the bias of the author. You can't find a particular style in this poems--there's no reliance on nature as theme, or strong use of personal circumstances, or anything that you might expect to find as a signature style.

Instead, what we get, at least in my opinion, is just a clever collection of words to tell a short story or message. Olson doesn't try to make a square peg fit a round hole. He'll write in rhymed verse if that makes sense, but he's not wedded to its use (or its absence). In other cases, there will be structure within a free verse setting. It's a refreshing variety that worked quite well for me.

If you must find a common idea in this collection, I guess it is the idea that the human race has kinda screwed up. It has its moments, but all in all, we seem more likely to do the wrong thing. Olson is a bit of a pessimist, but it doesn't make him write the poetry of the depressed. Instead, he channels his ironic look at life into well-structured form.

Take this poem, "Abdication of the Clown":

"Here, take the old suit
Of spots and rugles,
I've only been wearing it
As pajamas
And somehow lately
I just can't sleep.

Take the hat, too.
It's really only
A duked-up dunce-cap
But it's part of the uniform.
And here's the mask:
Take it, you need it

To give you character.
Go on, get in there
And do what they tell you
And hurry, hurry:
The stands are empty,
Everyone else
Is clowning already.

Don't worry about me.
I'll sit here
Dressed in my skin,
Disguised as myself
And from here on in
I'm only a spectator
Who can't bear to look."

These are the words of a man approaching seventy, who was a child for the first world war, an adult for the second, and a (likely) frustrated older man for Vietnam. He's done with playing the fool, but knows that someone else must take up the mantle. This is a very sad poem, but it's by no means maudlin. You can easily see that Olson is cynical about life, but it doesn't make him express his feelings in a way that reads like whining about it.

There is a similar vibe in other poems, as Olson appears to be reflecting on all kinds of things here in his arcade. "That Nothing is Evidence to Those to Whom it is not Evident" talks about an elephant who refuses to believe in butterflies that dies when someone doesn't believe in him. It's funny, but the point is clear. Who are we to say something cannot be, just because we cannot conceive of it ourselves?

The third section, a short play, makes the characters self-aware of their surroundings. No matter what they wish to do, they've become too attached to their roles, and can neither remove the clothes given to them by stage direction nor even remember their original names (if names they ever had). Despite this self-awareness, the players are still helpless to do anything other than their prescribed roles. I love how Olson created these characters and makes them speak about their use in theatre while also showing that we in life may also be just as trapped in our parts, even if we do know our own names.

Olson's Penny Arcade was a hidden gem for me. I loved the poetry and would definitely read more by him in the future. If you can find a copy of this book, and you like poetry that exposes life for what it is without getting maudlin, I think you'll find it every bit the treat that the original penny arcades were back in the day. I know I did!

Drive, They Said Poems About Americans and Their Cars edited by Kurt Brown

Anthologies are always a tricky thing, but I love the mystery that goes into reading one. You never quite know what you're in for, even if you're familiar with some of the authors. A lot of times, it all adds up to luck, even if the book comes with the backing someone you trust.

Drive, They Said was recommended to me by a person I usually agree with in terms of poetry, but this time we're as far apart as a highway with a scenic divider. The theme of this collection is poetry about how Americans relate to their cars, and at least to me, it made for some pretty bland reading.

I probably am not the target audience for this. While I might ogle a classic car, it's the age of the item, not the item itself, that wows me. I can appreciate a fine corvette, but I have no desire to get behind the wheel, not even for a test drive.

I own a car, but it's strictly utilitarian. I don't tinker with it. I don't fret that it's got a few dings from parking lots. I would no sooner change its oil myself than I would volunteer to clean up Three Mile Island. Hell, I've never even washed it. In other words, I'm not in love with cars, just what they can do for me when I need it.

Thus, this was an odd choice but I tried it anyway. Unfortunately, it just didn't register for me at all.

The first problem is that from the get-go, we're separated into gender before we do anything else. I hate gender separation as a rule, and given the subject of cars, that just made matters worse.

So the men get poems that try hard to sound masculine, with references to speeding, drinking, and leaving people behind. The women leave bad men, worry about the danger of being alone, and of course, the safety of their children. There's nothing wrong with these poems, but it feels like Brown as editor tried hard to make sure he ticked off ever gender cliche when compiling his opening sections. That turned me off, and made for tough sledding the rest of the way.

The other sections feature exactly what you'd expect, with no surprises to be found. "Driving into Yourself," "Stopping by the Side of the Road," "Head On," "Driving as Metaphor," "On the Bus," and "Passing Through" all do what they need to do in a way that passes muster but doesn't stretch the reader's comfort zones in any way. It's as though every poem was tested in front of an easily-offended church group. Unlike a highway in the rain with traffic moving far too fast, these poems gave me no sense of danger or thrill.

The section "Driving as Metaphor" ended up feeling far too forced, with the editor choosing the most obvious examples available. The comparisons are forced more often than not, reading more like an exercise for a college class than something I would want to read. In their own context, they probably aren't bad. However, when you read tortured line after tortured line trying to fit in the idea of cars relating to other parts of our life, it just gets to be a bit too much.

Of these sections, only "Head On" features any poem that wasn't apparently given an "inoffensive test" before making it into the collection and even those are edgy only in comparison to what is around them. As a result, I enjoyed it the most, but not enough to make up for the banal nature of the poems I read in the other areas.

There are a few well-known names in here. Joyce Carol Oates has a few entries in the women's ghetto, Robert Bly appears, as does Charles Wright. Wright's poem is one of the best in the collection, using the idea of a road to discuss the various ways people interacted by going to different neighborhoods. ee cummings also makes an appearance in a clumsy poem comparing driving a car to a person new at sex. I admit I've read very little of cummings' work, but I'd like to think he's done better.

Overall, I took a chance on this one, and feel like I came up with a lemon. The theme isn't close enough to me to forgive some bad poetry and the desire to make sure that no one reading this would get upset at a blatant sexual reference or overtly foul language just killed it for me. I'd recommend cruising to a different poetry book, but if you have a car-loving reader in your family, preferably an older one, this book might just work better for them than it did for me.

A Lume Spento by Ezra Pound

This book is so old I can't even find a picture to go with it, sorry.

As part of National Poetry month, I tried to read as much poetry as I could, which will trickle down into reviews here as time goes on.

One of the things I tackled was some Ezra Pound, a poet I've had on my "to-read" list for quite a while now.

Maybe I shouldn't have gone with an early work, or maybe I just have to accept that I am far more comfortable with the poetry of the personal, because for me this Pound was only worth a few cents.

(I apologize, that was terrible. Blame my editor. Oh wait, I don't have one.)

In a little over 100 pages of early poems and notebook work, there is simply not a single poem I liked, not even just a little bit. Usually, I can find at least one or two good poems even from a poet I dislike. But Pound's lines are just so blandly constructed on subjects that feel so artificial--a troubadour, dryads, old men with troubles, and the like, all portrayed as distant actors, without a chance to get close to the reader.

It's almost like reading Shakespeare without talent, or a homage to old poetry without a sense of irony that someone like Atwood might try. It's not that I object to the subject matter. I am going to rave about a poet that uses Barbie as her subject sometime soon, so I'm not saying you have to write from what you know. You can write a good poem, even today, about any of those things I list above. But the language Pound uses feels outdated even for the early 20th Century and today is just downright painful to slog through. I don't get this many "thee" and "thou" references when I read old Stan Lee Thor comics!

Here's a few snippets of the poems, chosen more or less at random.

From La Fraisne:

"For I was a gaunt, grave councilor
Being in all things wise, and very old,
But I have put aside this folly and the cold
That old age weareth for a cloak."

From Villonaud for the Yule:

"Towards the Noel that morte saison
(Christ make the shepherd's homage dear!)
Then when the grey wolves everychone
Drink of the winds their chill small-beer
And lap o' the snows food's gueredon
Then makyth my heart his yule-tide cheer
(Skoal! with the dregs if the clear be gone!)
Wineing the ghosts of yester-year."

The Tree (entire):

"I stood still and was a tree amid the wood
Knowing the truth of things unseen before,
Of Daphne and the laurel bow
And that god-feasting couple olde
That grew elm-oak amid the wold.
'twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart's home
That they might do this wonder-thing.
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
And many new things understood
That were rank folly to my head before."

This last example may be the best poem in the book, but even so, it's horribly dated for the time it's written, at least in my opinion. (I had a similar reaction to Robinson Jeffers' poetry.)

I do understand that this is Pound's early work, so maybe it gets better over time. I also think that those who like classical poetry post Shakespeare through the Victorian age (I don't) would enjoy the overwrought writings in this collection. But when your poetry requires footnotes by the poet, I think you're on thin ice and I'm pretty sure I don't want to read more, at least for awhile.

If you find yourself drawn to Kim Addonizio, Mark Doty, and other writers of the very personal, this is not the book for you. It's going to remind you of at least one of your interminable college english classes, where this type of writing was your professor's favorite. If you are a fan of classic poetry only, give this a shot. I have a feeling you'll like it. If you need me, I'll be hanging out with my complete works of Alan Ginsburg, something you'd be unlikely to enjoy. Luckily for us, poetry's nice and varied that way.

Time and Materials by Robert Hass

This is another National Book Award winner, which I think caught my eye when I was reading the New York Times Book Review on a regular basis. Hass, a collaborator with Czeslaw Milosz (one of my favorite poets), writes in a style that's very quiet. With a simplicity of lines and a keen eye for theme, Hass can say more about his subject than a lot of other poets, without going over the top or being melodramatic.

Here's a good example of what I am referring to, "Envy of Other People's Poems":

"In one version of the legend the sirens couldn't sing.
It was only a sailor's story that they could.
So Odysseus, lashed to the mast, was harrowed
By a music that he didn't hear--plungings of sea,
wind-sheer, the off-shore hunger of the birds--
And the mute women gathering kelp for garden mulch,
Seeing him strain against the cordage, seeing
The awful longing in his eyes, are changed forever
On their rocky waste of island by their imagination
Of his imagination of the song they didn't sing."

This is deconstruction of myth done on the down low. No grand lines about all the wrongs of the patriarchal past or anything, just "hey, what if Odysseus was terrified by the lack of what he wanted?" It's very well done, but it's done almost so subtly as to be missed. (Though, since this *did* win a major award, perhaps I am wrong in saying it could be overlooked.)

In "The Problem of Describing Trees", Hass takes a few licks, again very quietly, at poetry itself:

"The apsen glitters in the wind
And that delights us.

The leaf flutters, turning,
Because that motion in the heat of August
Protects its cells from drying out. Likewise the leaf
Of the cottonwood.

The gene pool threw up a wobbly stem
And the tree danced. No.
The tree capitalized.
No. There are limits to saying,
In language, what the tree did.

It is good sometimes for poetry to disenchant us.

Dance with me, dancer. Oh, I will.

Mountains, sky,
The aspen doing something in the wind."

Am I reading too much into Hass's lines? Maybe, but that's the fun of being a reviewer, you get to put your own spin on things. "Art and Life", a longer poem, uses a painter as the subject, but the theme also seems to tie into a poet and his writing. I'll only reproduce the ending here:

"...Here is the life that chose you
And the one you chose. Here is the brush, horsehair,
Hair of the badger, the goat's beard, the sable,
And here is the smell of paint. The volitile, sharp oils
Of linseed, rapeseed. Here is the stench of the essence
Of pinewood in a can of turpentine. Here is the hand,
Flick of wrist, tendon-ripple of the brushstroke. Here--
Cloud, lake water lifting on a summer morning,
Ash and ash and chalky ash--is the stickiness of paint
Adhering to the woven flax of the canvas, here
Is the faithfulness of paint on paint on paint on paint.
Something stays this way we cannot have,
Comes alive because we cannot have it."

Change a few of those words, and it's a comment on the writer trying to capture that which he sees and that which he imagines.

And hey, even if you don't agree with me in relation to the meaning--look at that artistry of the flow of the poem. The density of the words, the beauty of the repetition, the power and description placed in every line. This poem itself is a work of art!

As with Milosz, the poems collected here either come from personal experience or are written in such a way as to make the reader feel close to the speaker. There is an intimacy that comes out through the pages which draws me into work such as Hass' that other writers cannot match. We could make character sketches of the speakers, be they women performing daily tasks or a young boy watching his father pull power trips over his wife in the underbelly of the 1950s.

Not all the poems are quite so serious. Hass includes a section of playful writing with his friend Milosz, based on the difference between "o" and "oh", and there's even a short piece featuring cucumber, called, appropriately enough, "Poem with a Cucumber In It." Another poem is an argument between two lovers that's written in verse with dashes indicating the change in speakers. The variety of styles is actually quite amazing.

I usually end poetry reviews with one more parting line from the artist, but I think this time I will merely recommend Hass' work to you, because there really is no definitive piece to quote. As vast as it is quiet, this book's materials will definitely hold up over time.

(I did not, please note, promise not to leave on a horrible pun based on the book's title.)

Fire to Fire by Mark Doty

I know it's shocking, but yes, I'm actually reviewing a relatively new book for a change. Usually by the time I get around to things, they're scuffed up, dog-eared, and there's only a little residue to show where the "new" sticker once lived.

But here I am, and with a National Book Award winner, to boot!

Fire to Fire is an odd choice to win an award, at least from my perspective. It's not really a new collection of poems--only the first 50 pages are new material, meaning that essentially a chapbook takes the cake over whatever other poetry books were published in 2008. I find it odd that a "Best of..." wins an award over entirely new material, but since I don't read enough new poetry to say this was or was not the best, I'll just note my eyebrow quirk at the selection and move on.

I must admit that I had trouble with this book. Because it featured a lot of selections from over Doty's life, it was hard for me to get a feel for his poetry at any given time. (I do not, as a rule, care for "best of..." books, preferring to make my own decisions in this regard.) This was further compounded by Doty's seeming desire to show how large his vocabulary is.

When I was in school, my mother made me look up any any all words I didn't know the meaning to, which gave me a life-long hatred of two things--the dictionary and people who used obscure words where common words will do. As a result, Doty's style was not a good fit for me personally, as I kept thinking about how I was really glad I didn't have to read any of his work in high school.

This does not, however, mean I disliked his poetry as a rule. Far from it. I liked his turn of phrase (when not going for five dollar words), and as long-time readers of my reviews know, I am a big fan of poetry of the personal, which Doty writes in abundance. There are quite a few poems dealing with the interrelations of himself and his friends, particularly those who are dying. I am assuming the most personal deal with a dying lover or lovers, but they could possibly be fictionalized.

Here's an example, "Brilliance":

"Maggie's taking care of a man
who's dying; he's attending to everything,
said goodbeye to his parents,

paid off his credit card.
She says Why don't you just
run it up to the limit?

but he wants everything
squared away, no balance owed,
though he misses the pets

he's already found a home for
--he can't be around dogs or cats,
too much risk. He says,

I can't have anything.
She says, A bowl of goldfish?
He says he doesn't want to start

with anything and then describes
the kind he'd maybe like,
how their tails would fan

to a gold flaring. They talk
about hot jewle tones,
gold lacquer, say maybe

they'll go pick some out
though he can't go much of anywhere and then
abruptly he says I can't love

anything I cant' finish.
He says it like he's had enough
of the whole scintillant worldm

though what he means is
he'll never be satisfied and therefore
has established this discipline,

a kind of severe rehersal.
That's where they leave it,
him looking out the windowm

her knitting as she does because
she needs to do something.
Later he leaves a message:

Yes to the bowl of goldfish.
Meaning: let me go, if I have to,
in brilliance. In a story I read,

a Zen master who'd perfected
his detachment from the things of the world
remembered, at the moment of dying,

a deer he used to feed in the park,
and wondered who might care for it,
and at that instant was reborn

in the stunned flesh of a fawn.
So, Maggie's friend--
is he going out

into the last loved object
of his attention?
Fanning the veiled translucence

of an opulent tail,
undulant in some uncapturable curve,
is he bronze chrysanthemums,

copper leaf, hurried darting,
doubloons, icon-colored fins
troubling the water?"

Though a bit longer than the poems I usually quote for reviews, I think it's the best example of Doty's closeness to whatever his subject is, whether it's getting a constantly one-upped massage, the love of a dog, or picking out kimonos with a friend. There is an intimacy of communication that I find deeply enjoyable, when I am not being hammered by the poet's wealth of obscure words.

I really wish I could quote in full another poem that shows, I think the personality of Doty, called "Homo Will Not Inherit," a poetic screed against those who would judge people who don't share their religious views. It starts with the setting, goes on to describe a posting with the title words on it, and then Doty shows the world that he as a homosexual (and to some extent, all outsiders from the norm--childfree couples, atheists, pagans, goths, punks, zinesters, and the like can all find a similar theme here, I think) inhabits is the kingdom he wishes to inherit. The city after dark, uncaring police, the love of a strange man--this is Doty's paradise.

I think this exerpt says it best: "...the exile you require of me,/you who've posted this invitation/to a heaven nobody wants." is a line many people I know can take to heart. "I have my kingdom," is the poem's last line. I couldn't agree more.

Doty's poetic style is a bit of an aquired taste, I think. He grew on me as the collection moved deeper into his earlier work, as I absorbed his world from the lines on the page. If you let yourself do that, too, I think you'll find this book, while a collection of the past, is worthy of an award nod. While I prefer whole texts, and will seek out Doty's other books, those looking for a sampling will find "Fire to Fire" well worth the read.

Bells in Winter by Czeslaw Milosz

I first discovered Mr. Milosz in a book of polish poets and quickly fell in love with his style. I admire his ability to look at the world around him and describe it poetically, in a translation, no less.

Bells in Winter is from 1978, 2 years before he would win the Nobel Prize. The collection consists mostly of shorter works, which are my favorite style of poems and where he shines best. The longer works towards the end are rather rambling and don't hold my interest as much as the poems at the beginning, but that is true for just about every poet I've ever read--for me, the longer the poem, the more likely it is to lose its poetic qualities that drew me to it in the first place.

However, there are still flashes even within the longer poems, such as this start to the third section of "From the Rising of the Sun":

"If I am responsible
It is not for everything.
I didn't support the theses of Copernicus.
I was neither for nor against Galileo's case.
My ships have never left the pond to sail the seas.
When I was born, locomotives ran on rails
Moving in a jumble of wheels and pistons,
And the echo of an express train rang wide
Through forest no longer primeval.
The district was inhabited by folk, Jews and gentlemen.
You went by horse cart to buy kerosene, herring, and salt,
But in the towns they were using electricity.
It was said that someone had invented the wireless telegraph.
Books were already written. Ideas thoroughly discussed.
The ax was put to the tree."

That's the story of a person who cannot believe the changes of the past century--it sounds like your grandparent talking. It's the poetry of the everyday, given the artistic touches of a master poet. That is the style I like best, and Milosz has it in abundance.

Here's another example, "Calling to Order":

"You could scream
Because mankind is mad.
But you, of all people, should not.

Out of what thin sand
And mud and slime
Out of what dogged splinters
Did you fashion your castle against the test of the sea,
And now it is touched by a wave.

What chaos
received bounds, from here to there.
What abyss
Was seen and passed over in silence.
What fear
Of what you are.

It shows itself
But that is not it.
It is named
Yet remains nameless.
It is coming to be
But has not begun.

Your castle will topple
Into the wine-colored
Funeral sea,
She will assuage your pride.

Yet you knew how
To use next to nothing.
It is not a matter of wisdom
Or Virtue.

So how can you condemn
The unreason of others."

Note that the last sentence is a statement, not a question. You can almost see Milosz and another, phantom person--Milosz's internal self, perhaps?--arguing about the state of the world and this poem being the result.

In fact, argument and doubt is at play in most of the works I've read by Milosz so far. It seems he wrestled with his faith after conversion and poems like "How it Was", "Readings", and "Temptation":

"Under a starry sky I was taking a walk,
On a ridge overlooking neon cities,
With my companion, the spirit of desolation,
Who was running around and sermonizing,
Saying that I was not necessary, for if not I, then someone else
Would be walking here, trying to understand his age.
Had I died long ago nothing would have changed.
The same stars, cities and countries
Would have been seen with other eyes.
The world and its labors would go on as they do.

For Christ's sake, get away from me.
You've tormented me enough, I said.
It's not ip to me to judge the calling of men.
And my merits, if any, I won't know anyway."

Those are the same sorts of questions I have wrestled with since I was a teenager. While Milosz and I came to different conclusions--I left the church he opted to join--the journey is a similar one.

It seems almost silly to tell people they should read a Nobel-winning poet, but I'm going to do it anyway. Find a book of Milosz's poetry and read it. You'll be glad you did.