Gods of Winter
Dana Gioia. Graywolf Press, $15 (64pp) ISBN 978-1-55597-148-9
The gods of Gioia's ( Daily Horoscope ) second collection of poetry are like snow. Their glory is ephemeral. At first appearance, they dazzle--aloof, pure, silent. But like their human counterparts, they succumb to time and weather. Through catastrophe or a gradual melting away, change buries all things human and divine, and memory resurrects them only briefly. On these themes Gioia writes a few superb poems. ``Counting the Children'' concerns an accountant who, charged with settling an estate, discovers in the deceased's house a roomful of dismembered dolls. Later, watching his daughter sleep, he muses grimly: ``Each spirit, be it infant, bird or flower, / Comes to the world perfected and complete, / And only time proves its unraveling.'' It seems ironic that Gioia mars his collection with several self-promotional poems. ``My Confessional Sestina'' targets ``youngsters in poetry workshops'' who write sestinas as ``the official entry blank into the little magazines.'' Yet he merely asserts his own priority by mimicking the form and the practitioners he purports to disavow. pk (May)
Details
Reviewed on: 03/04/1991
Genre: Fiction
Hardcover - 64 pages - 978-1-55597-147-2