First Light by David Wagoner (review)

Reviews 241 the “Two Poems from Swede Hill,” entitled “Barn,” he has composed a litany to these objects. Suddenly there are ancient odors! My grandfather’sbarn! Pitchforks lean in the far corner, prongs stuck in old planks. Adim puddle ofoil covered in hayseeds and dust lies under the mowing machine. Cobwebs stretch between rusted tines of the pitchforks. At the bottom of a dusty gallon jug, its cork fallen in, a mouse lieson hisback, twisted in hislastbreath, the unfinished gesturesof life. Sund exhibits a fine ear and has a clean sense of image. He has published only one other volume of poetry. He is now fifty-five years old — a decade younger than Judson Crews. Maybe, with the publication of these books, these two poets will receive the recognition they deserve. J. WESLEY CLARK, Galesville, Maryland First Light. By David Wagoner. (Boston/Toronto: Little, Brown, 1983. 114 pages, $7.95.) David Wagoner’sFirst Light is a richly-textured account of his relation­ ship with the world, an account which emphasizes his first perceptions. From the childhood self-portrait in “The Truant Officer’sHelper” to the final poem, the title poem of the volume, Wagoner consistently leads the reader from the periphery of that world into the center of his vision, from the perception of the world without to contemplation of the world within, and finally, perhaps, a seeing beyond the forms of the personal world into the cyclic nature of life itself. The poems are arranged in such a way that they contribute to this motion and leave the reader at the end with the sense of the whole cycle’s starting again. In family portraits, we see the beginning edge of the poet’s awareness of himself as a writer. In “The Truant Officer’s Helper,” he tells of his need, even as a child, to write, a need so great that he took paper and pencil from the school storage room: 242 Western American Literature That night in a shed loft I flewwith a feather bed Bylamplight, writing my first Short story . .. I tried hard to be good And smart and made it up Out ofmyown head On that stolen paper, My stolen pencil trembling. At one point we find Wagoner working with the idea that life never turns out as our society has taught us it will, or as our social institutions have led us to expect. He signals the tone of this section in “Under the Raven’s Nest.” His reference to the Native American trickster figure of Raven suggests the dual nature of his subject, as the trickster figure isboth a cultural hero and a bumbling prankster whose tricks always turn back upon himself. Through these poems the poet shows that even the most innocent expectations, such as those we receive from fairy tales and myths, suffer disappointment in the realistic living out of life. For the prince in “Sleeping Beauty,” the hard part wasn’t getting into the castle; the hard part was “Getting Out Of There.” In “In the Booking Room,” there was no doubt about the shoplifter’s guilt, but why was he “holding a handkerchief dripping blood/Tight over one ear like an empty seashell”?This group of poems climaxes in the disillusioned disappointment of “Canticle for Xmas Eve,” which plays off several Christmas songs. The poem asserts that even Christianity has hardly changed man’s violence against his fellows. Perhaps the most arresting part of the book is the last poem, the title poem. Its nature, together with its position as the last poem of the book, cre­ ates in the reader a sense that the whole cycle of poems isbeginning again, that the book as it stands is only a “first light,” or a first insight — even, perhaps, a first existence. The poem is filled with images of new beginnings: a dark green earth, rain, sun, morning, bird song, awakening, new fledged, dawn: You see my eyeshave opened With yours. Each ofus turns To the other, arms outstretched, Then closed, both newly fledged But aswing-sure at wakening As owl-flight or wren-flight And as song-struck as this dawn. The poem speaks of resurrection through the knowledge...