Backlist: The Permanence of Change

Backlist: TBVlBW" The Permanence of Change Lives of the Sleepers Ned Balbo University of Notre Dame Press http://www.undpress.nd.edu 90 pages; cloth, $25.00; paper, $15.00 In his second collection of poetry, Lives ofthe Sleepers, Ned Balbo engages readers by vacillating between the religious, the mythical, and, most interestingly , the biological. The opening poem, "Desire: A Bestiary," the first ofa series scattered throughout the book, begins with a return to the classical invocation of the muses. Balbo's is a modern approach to the antique tradition, however, and rather than appealing to the mythic, he addresses the natural, a frigate bird, and addresses the sometimes ominous nature of song: Your throat-sac quivers, bright balloon from which song bursts too late, too soon, your head near-swallowed by the pulsing of your throat. Lives ofthe Sleepers is divided into three sections , each beginning with a similar form of invocation . In section 1 Balbo addresses a bird, in section 2 he prays to a god, and in section 3 he speaks with the Muses. By section 3, Balbo drops any guise by aptly titling the poem, "Invocation." Among Balbo's most significant achievements in this volume is the way he inspects humanity from a biological perspective. He often reveals what is most human (loss, love, transformation, moral deformity) by writing with scientific exactness about bees, birds, and banana slugs. Balbo creates an objective correlative by paralleling the biological landscape with the human experience. He acknowledges this attempt when he asks, "had I called / The bees to act as I could not, an impulse / Toward destruction...." Balbo develops his metaphor most clearly in "Millennial ." The poem begins with an epigraph from an article concerning the increasing deformity of frogs in NorthAmerica. Balbo eerily equates man with this disturbance in nature, with the plague of altered frogs Infesting mud and marsh. What will deceive Our bodies—force or substance, accident, Genetic postscript—leaving us transformed, Lines of descent disrupted, broken off? We're foundering already. . .. Many of Balbo's poems are similarly understated , restrained and dry. Though this quality of Balbo's writing is initially discouraging, upon a second read it becomes clear that what appears to be lyrical dullness is really a form ofobjectivism. Only rarely does the reader encounter the poet himself in the poems, so careful is Balbo to remain outside the poem, detached and fascinated by scientific reconstruction . Balbo explains that "the language we select / implies its opposite...." Not only does language function dually, but so does nature. Throughout Lives ofthe Sleepers, Balbo meditates on the idea of transformation and change, as suggested earlier in the frog poem. Balbo does this more overtly, however, in other poems, particularly in the series "Desire: A Bestiary." In two of the poems, one about a banana slug, the other about a slipper limpet, Balbo writes about "hermaphodites" in the animal kingdom that undergo "transfiguration Rhiannon Dickerson / change of gender, resignation / having settled on a rock." This literal transformation is symbolic of the metaphysical transformation in humanity, spiritually adapting to environmental changes. There is only "certainty in change." Balbo reveals what is most human by writing about bees, birds, and banana slugs. In addition to Balbo's nature poems, many of his other poems originate in myth and literature. Balbo brilliantly channels classic characters like Cupid and Psyche through haunting monologues. He also recreates poets such as Dante and Petrarch. This use ofdramatic monologue also furthers Balbo's distanced voice, the shifting monologue allowing for a distinctpersona necessarily removed from the poet. His poetry consciously seeks loss of identity: To forget Is all that I ask now: to feel this grief Fall off, to lose all dark thoughts, to erase The past, to keep on singing till her voice Is lost, submerged in mine, to sing till song Itself is all that's left.... The poet merges with Dante, with Petrarch, with Psyche, with the slipper limpet. It is through the "other" that, at last, the poet emerges. Balbo's portrayal of the classical through the modern paradigm is his most enduring accomplishment . Balbo creates a collection distinguished for its eloquent merging of the historic, the biological, and the...