PS3569.L3

By David R. Slavitt

Book Overview

PS3569.L3, David R. Slavitt's sixtieth book, is a collection of poems, translations, imitations, parodies, jeux de mots, and jeux d'esprit--work that ranges from grief-stricken brooding to exuberant clowning around. The odd title, for instance, is nothing more or less than the author's Library of Congress identification, which he adopts now that it has adopted him. Few contemporary poets display his range of sensibility and response to the various occasions of chaotic existence in our time, and Slavitt offers us his reactions to those stresses and cultural shocks that have not so much engaged his attention as ambushed it. He writes poetry that ascends to Pindar and Meleager, or descends some traditional prosodic scale even to the point where it risks gibberish--or basks in it--and he makes no apology for this.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807123013
• ISBN13: 9780807123010
• Release Date: August 1998
• Publisher: LSU Press
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Playful and Intelligent

PS3569.L3's title is taken from the beginning of the Library of Congress number for Mr. Slavitt's books, of which there are quite a few at this point. The title poem is a fun-loving and self-deprecating meditation on literary success. This book is of an aesthetic whole -- the tone of which is set by the playful title. The poem "Tryma", addressed to the speaker's granddaughter, is a word-playing bit of advice on how to be one's self in face of pressures from peers and classmates, but it also serves as a dictum on how to insist on one's own poetic vision. And as Joyce Carol Oates has written of Slavitt, "he is his own man, his own poet." There is also a section of "Translations, Imitations, and Caprices" which includes translations from Christian Morgenstern, Giacomo Leopardi, and Horace, as well as witty and downright fun ruminations on Pindar and others. And then there's the religious meditations -- "Adam", "Paradise Lost: an Alternative Version", "Wonder Rabbi", "Invocation", and others. These are some of the finest in the book, as Slavitt is perfectly at home with religious material (due at least in part to his having translated much of the Bible, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and other ancient/religious texts). In the final analysis, this is a book worth owning and revisiting. I recommend it highly for both lovers of poetry and the generally educated/interested reader.

Poetic relevance

Here, Slavitt has once again shown that our modern society can still support the weight of serious poetry. Mixing humor and _gravitas_ simultaneously, he also combines the past with the present and the personal with the universal. Doesn't every person wonder how he or she will be remembered -- as a name (like Pindar) or as a number upon a shelf?