A Review of Gerald Stern's What I Can't Bear Losing: Notes from a Life (review)

What I Can't Bear Losing: Notes from a Life, by Gerald Stern. W. W. Norton and Company. 256 pages, cloth, $24.95

In the course of the 20 autobiographical essays that comprise What I Can't Bear Losing, Gerald Stern ranges from recollection to meditation, from the personal to the political, and from the secular to the religious with characteristic energy. The breadth of vision that he brings to his poetry is evident here, and the generosity of spirit with which he engages the world gives the essays their emotional center.

The collection begins with the essay "Sunday," a remembrance of growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in Pittsburgh during the Great Depression and of reaching adulthood in time to be drafted late in World War II. In the same way that Stern rebels against the physical and spiritual lethargy of the city's Calvinists, the essay itself—as with others in the book—is loath to stand still. Stern moves from his parents' weekend arguments to differences between the Jewish and Christian Sabbaths to crashing weddings:

I quickly gathered the necessary details, made friends with one of the older women, worked up a defense in case anyone should recognize me, and adopted a persona and a history for the evening: I was from Steubenville, Ohio, or Detroit or the Bronx. I even did Russian dances, Kazatakas.

The dance is a fine image for the way these essays work, although perhaps more along the lines of a square dance—the theme of the essay moving from partner to partner, but never losing sight of the underlying pattern.

Those who know Stern's poetry from his 13 collections will not be surprised that the genesis for many of these essays is rooted deeply in a particular place or circumstance. However, two of the most intriguing essays are among the collection's most philosophical and meditative: "The Sabbath" and "Caves."

In "The Sabbath," Stern returns to and deepens his consideration of the cultural and spiritual traditions embodied in the day of rest. "The Talmudists spent their Sabbath eating, drinking, and praising God. Mostly praising God. At least they were supposed to. And when it came to imagining Heaven, what else could they turn to but pleasing the senses a little and spending hour on hour in beautiful prayer and study."That seems to be not only the Talmudists' position, but Stern's as well. It's refreshing in a time of self-satisfied neo-Puritanism and political conservatism to have a voice praising the Gnostic insight that the body and the spirit are not mutually exclusive.

"Caves" is another meditative essay that rewards rereading. Stern begins by recalling places he has lived, among them what had been a lawyer's office "treasured because of its seediness" and an apartment in Brunswick, New Jersey, so large he was "able to play full-court handball with a friend."These spaces become more than simply places to eat and sleep. They are spiritual refuges—worldly, transitory heavens. "I will never be done with caves," he writes. "They certainly connect with a history not hundreds but thousands of years old, and they are loving reminders of our most delicate and perhaps our happiest time on earth." The whole of "Caves," from its consideration of Greek myth to the dilemma of political prisoners, is reminiscent of Gaston Bachelard's seminal The Poetics of Space—except more accessible.

What I Can't Bear Losing also brings to mind a remarkable work by another poet-turned-essayist. While different in many ways, Stern's collection nonetheless shares qualities with the late Richard Hugo's Real West Marginal Way. Chiefly, both Stern and Hugo situate their lives within the economic, political, and geographical circumstances of their time: for Hugo that included being wounded in World War...