What are the chances? Two poetic book reviews, back-to-back, and neither book is about poetry.
I already wrote about The Cadillac Man, now Thursday's Wall Street Journal comes through with a review of a book about pain, The Body Broken, by Lynne Greenberg.
The review is by the Journal's health reporter Laura Landro, and at the outset looked like something I could easily skip. Woman's neck hurts. I don't feel so good myself.
But there is more poetry, literally, in the book review, and I suspect in the book itself, than I've ever encountered in a book review that is not about a book of poetry. But that's me. I don't read books for a living. Even given that, by all measures, there's a quantity.
I'm no expert on John Milton, but he plays out prominently in the review. What I always thought was an original Winston Churchill utterance is really a lifted line from a Milton sonnet, "they also serve who only stand and wait." And I'm sure neither Milton, nor Churchill had the Starbuck's crowd in mind.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are also woven into the book. And it's not an anthology.
Much was made of Auden's poem September 1, 1939 soon after the 9/11 events. I must admit that perhaps I've been like the author of the reviewed book and have used poetry to kill some pain and salve some wounds. Even before 9/11 I was holding Auden's, "show an affirming flame," inside my head and using it like something from the medicine cabinet. I still do.
Yeats created poetry and said it makes nothing happen. I can't agree. I'm sure I've saved a good deal of co-pay by allowing a few lines to cross my mind.
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