Through One Tear: Poems

This challenging first collection grapples with large questions in unexpected ways. ""Is heritage the honing or the rusting of the blade?"" Nobles asks in one poem. In another: ""How can we/ trick you/ into your self,// dear life?"" For the skeptical but hopeful Nobles, however, the central question is the value of life: ""How to make a moment matter? Tears, toil, darkness/ can't do it. Nor tradition. Nor lines around/ the eyes and mouth."" Trying to answer such questions, Nobles turns to the figure of the artist, whom he often dramatizes as a warrior. He writes of Ezra Pound, the surrealists, Van Gogh. He finds that ""The ship moves/ against the sea. And the men,/ those bleak anomalies, move within the ship."" The core of this outstanding collection are the poems in which Nobles addresses the question of faith and in which his sardonic wit and yearning for meaning play against each other in powerful ways. He argues with himself: ""The soul/ is something. Must be/ something. At least/ a dream/ in a small, thin/ box. You cannot/ see, but feel/ its buzz/ die when you/ block/ your heart's ear."" In ""Thorn of Light,"" a poem reminiscent of fellow New Englander Robert Frost, Nobles's inner argument comes to an uneasy conclusion as he writes of walking down a path through the woods and realizing that ""each and every tree can be transformed/ into a Cross/ if we could only find the interest."" (June)