{"id":3869,"date":"2013-02-08T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-08T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=3869"},"modified":"2020-12-09T14:36:18","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T14:36:18","slug":"james-naiden-reviews-john-calvin-rezmerskis-breaking-the-rules-starting-with-ghazals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/james-naiden-reviews-john-calvin-rezmerskis-breaking-the-rules-starting-with-ghazals\/","title":{"rendered":"James Naiden reviews John Calvin Rezmerski\u2019s ‘Breaking The Rules: Starting with Ghazals’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This more-or-less recent book of poems by John Calvin Rezmerski received no critical attention after it appeared in 2010, unfortunate because publishing a book is one thing, but sending it out to places where a reviewer or an interested editor might see it is quite another. I came across Breaking The Rules<\/em> only because I entered a bookstore near the University of Minnesota one Sunday evening in October 2012 and encountered the poet, whose work I\u2019d written about in my own literary journal, The North Stone Review,<\/em> back in 1990 and again in 2002.\u00a0 But the bookstore was about to close for the night, so we left and walked to his car in a nearby parking lot. When I asked if he\u2019d published any books in the last decade, he looked surprised and then in the near dark fished around in the boot of his vehicle. He produced a copy of Breaking The Rules <\/em>and handed it to me. In reply to my question, he shrugged and said the book had received no reviews or attention of any kind from the critics. I was surprised because Rezmerski has always seemed \u2013 to me, at least \u2013 a writer of considerable import.<\/p>\n

After his first book, Held for Questioning,<\/em> appeared in 1966 (the same year Seamus Heaney\u2019s first collection, Death of a Naturalist<\/em>, was published in London by Faber and Faber), Rezmerski finished graduate school at Kansas and took a job teaching at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, where he stayed for the rest of his academic career. A Pennsylvanian by birth and upbringing, he came into the world in January 1942. After four decades, he retired as Writer in Residence at GAC and eventually moved to nearby Mankato, where he lives now with his third wife, Lorna Rafness. I mention all this because Rezmerski has largely been ignored by the Great Mentioners of the American poetry scene or in any other Anglophone country, perhaps because he has always lived in smaller communities and has not been \u201ca climber\u201d in literary politics. Instead, he has been a steady worker \u2013 poet, prose writer, editor, and \u2013 as a teacher \u2013 a respected mentor to successive waves of younger writers, although always low-key. (One of his other major interests has been science fiction.)<\/p>\n

So what is a ghazal? Many definitions follow \u2013 more than for the sonnet\u2019s tight waist at fourteen lines, for example. In a prefatory statement, Rezmerski includes eight rules for this ancient form started by both Persian and Arabic writers and more recently renewed by contemporary poets such as Adrienne Rich and Robert Bly. So Rezmerski uses this form, varied as it has always been \u2013 as the book\u2019s sub-title infers \u2013 and then proceeds to use his own language instincts to portray his life, his observations, the milieus of those he has encountered since his early years in Pennsylvania. His own influences \u2013 Walt Whitman, Thomas McGrath, Frederick Manfred, Woody Guthrie, and his late close friend, Bill Holm (1943-2009) \u2013 have instilled the virtue of straight sentences, unambiguous meanings, although it is understood that an artist\u2019s life is more often than not comprised of anything but logical sequences. One can be playful in this serious art form known as poetry \u2013 right? (If you say No, then maybe you\u2019ve been reading too much theology \u2013 or even worse, law books.)<\/p>\n

Here, for example, are the third and fourth couplets (of six) of \u201cKeeping Holy the Lord\u2019s Day\u201d \u2013<\/p>\n

Lying long abed a soulmate\u2019s warmth and hair and<\/p>\n

waking voice is the fullest congregation a day of rest calls for.<\/p>\n

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Good morning, I love you, I\u2019ll make the coffee: a homily<\/p>\n

that reliably calls to our creed, our need for ritual, our bonds.<\/p>\n

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As a collection of poems, or ghazals, Breaking The Rules<\/em>, is long \u2013 124 pages, including the author\u2019s intro \u2013 \u201cA Few Notes on the Genesis of This Book\u201d \u2013 two and a half pages of prose which help the reader\u2019s understanding of Rezmerski\u2019s mise-en-sc\u00e9ne<\/em>, indeed his motives for this form of poetry and his vigorous experimentation with myriads of subject matter. Here is the entirety of \u201cThe Future Has A Mind of Its Own\u201d:<\/p>\n

Responsibility to the future looks back<\/p>\n

and tells us to keep looking ahead.<\/p>\n

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In virtual monasteries in the mythic mountains,<\/p>\n

all creeds are truly hypothetical. We suppose.<\/p>\n

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Too many gilded promises and loaded sermons<\/p>\n

elude the Department of Prophecy Enforcement.<\/p>\n

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Snow piles up and remains snow, even if<\/p>\n

somebody insists it\u2019s condensed divinity.<\/p>\n

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People keep telling me they know how I think.<\/p>\n

As if. Yeah, as if I knew myself. Tell me.<\/p>\n

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If we work too hard at predicting tomorrow,<\/p>\n

we may not recognize it when it comes.<\/p>\n

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Outside of time snowballs lose their speed,<\/p>\n

their hardness, whiteness, usefulness, and cool.<\/p>\n

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Other notable ghazals \u2013 loose in appearance, but tight in construction \u2013 are: \u201cChurn, Churn, Churn\u201d; \u201cThe Reaper Regrets\u201d; and \u201cDemocratic Vistas,\u201d the latter a paean to Whitman\u2019s \u201cbarbaric yawp\u201d and the ultimate democracy of Bill Holm, Rezmerski\u2019s close friend and a genuine Minnesota original. One more memorable effort is \u201cMoments in the History of Our Language,\u201d which I\u2019ll not quote from here but strongly recommend you find once this book is in your hands.<\/p>\n

Among Rezmerski\u2019s influences also has been Elise Matthesen of Lioness Jewelry, whose necklaces inspired \u201cThe Lioness\u2019s Necklaces\u201d \u2013 the final section of the book. Here are the last four (of eight) couplets of \u201c\u2018Tears,\u2019 She Said\u201d \u2013<\/p>\n

Were bottled tears kept as relics of love\u2019s saints?<\/p>\n

What miracles were tears supposed to bring about?<\/p>\n

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What could make tears worth saving even a little while?<\/p>\n

Warm, they had weight; tepid, they were about nothing.<\/p>\n

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The last time she cried was so long ago, she tried again.<\/p>\n

Cried just because it seemed to be about time.<\/p>\n

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\u201cTears,\u201d she said. \u201cThey distill it from tears.\u201d<\/p>\n

She knew exactly what she was talking about.<\/p>\n

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John Calvin Rezmerski has been writing and publishing for half a century. He is a coeval of Heaney, Geoffrey Hill, Robert Pinsky, Louise Gl\u00fcck and a few other notables beyond praise. Superb poets \u2013 fiction writers and playwrights, too \u2013 ought be recognized while still alive. So it is and should be with this poet.<\/p>\n

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John Calvin Rezmerski\u2019<\/strong>s Breaking The Rules<\/em>: Starting with Ghazals <\/em>is published by Red Dragonfly Press, Red Wing, Minnesota. Order your copy\u00a0here <\/a>or here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                        This more-or-less recent book of poems by John Calvin Rezmerski received no critical attention after it appeared in 2010, unfortunate because publishing a book is one thing, but sending it out to places where a reviewer or an interested editor might see it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3869"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23731,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3869\/revisions\/23731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}