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From Deep Space: the Poetry of Robert Dana Edward Brunner The Iowa Review Volume 22 Article 25 Issue 3 Fall 1992 From Deep Space: The oP etry of Robert Dana Edward Brunner Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Brunner, Edward. "From Deep Space: The oeP try of Robert Dana." The Iowa Review 22.3 (1992): 115-134. Web. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0021-065X.4199 This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by Iowa Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in The oI wa Review by an authorized administrator of Iowa Research Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. From Deep Space: The Poetry of Robert Dana Edward Brunner IFONE ATTENDS primarily to the brisk, clipped tone that sounds fre I I Know a quently in Robert Dana's What Think (new poems, with selec a tion from his four previous volumes plus number of uncollected works from the 1950s) one might conclude thatDana descends from the long line of street-tough poets ?sharp, brusque, guarded?that originated with now to Villon and extends Philip Levine, C. K. Williams, and Raymond a Carver. For such poets, the urban setting supplies backdrop of random must violence against which they define themselves. Their essential prob can in so an lem is whether anything like tenderness be sustained hostile to amoment or environment. Often their solution is recall of fragility vul nerability that emerged unexpectedly, despite violent circumstances. These poets deploy the poem as a guard or shield: the hard shell of their serves to it brusque voice sequester that fragile moment, preserving for so always. And Villon's poems naturally take the form of last wills and testaments, handing down gifts for posterity (even ironic gifts); and return to in to a Levine's poems frequently adolescent days Detroit, time same when toughness and tenderness seemed opposite sides of the coin. Yet ultimately, Dana's work fits awkwardly alongside poems in the on street-tough tradition. That tradition depends plain speaking. A flat, next-to-prose discourse is useful because its very blankness alludes to the it can cast to weight of the city streets, but also because easily be aside an reverence. redeem instance by depicting it with special But the verbal a to con surface of Dana poem is apt be unusually disrupted. Several voices tend for dominance in the middle of "Aquamarine": We shell before breakfast, washing the morning's haul in the kitchen sink. Dull Atlantic cockles mostly; a one Baby's Ear; perfect Lion's Paw; a few, small 115 University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The Iowa Review ® www.jstor.org bright calicoes my sister wouldn't walk so far for, as just she won't sketch or swimmers, the jeweled hues of the blue crab I hold up one for her by of its blue or tipped claws, recall from deep space the years before my mother's death the voice I can't remember. "Those weren't nice times," she says. Dana's meditative discourse lists evocative names that enliven a humdrum exerts routine. But that is interrupted when his sister's presence its author names not ity. Dana holds up for pleasure but everyone will be apprecia tive. Others deny themselves pleasure, including the beauty of "blue- / one tipped claws." His sister's prohibitions prevent recovering the voice an an Dana would hear, absence introduced by unusually tangled syntax that replicates the "deep space the years." That precious voice is lost, while we ? the voice hear is its sheer opposite the flat speech of his sister, pivoting on an the inert word "nice." Her voice effectively duplicates absolute more one border. And the lost voice is all the haunting because the who a so a might hold remnant of itwithin herself is notoriously poor judge of what is worthwhile. in moment Street-tough poets seek the bucolic the urban?the tender to counter streets. that, while frail, is strong enough the violence of the or restore a tem Through such redemptive gestures, they promote order, measure porary of civility. Dana inverts that characteristic trope: he finds scene the urban in the bucolic. The placid discloses marks of distress; the a settled region is grim frontier. Rather than promoting order, he would a to lower barriers. Instead of closing with unifying gesture, he yearns step to beyond conventions speak easily, intimately. The street-tough poets say we we are we moments may think tough but have great of tenderness. we are we are we Dana says we may think fragile but tougher than think. we our We can endure dislocation, the disruptions of loss; should celebrate resilience. 116 In another deviation from the street-tough tradition, Dana's poems rarely a unfold in urban settings. Their backdrop is usually rural Midwest of farm towns. are fields and small To be sure, these patchwork settings hardly bucolic; they are, if anything, disheveled, half-finished, incomplete. Their haphazard features suggest misalliance. Not everything has worked out properly; untold stories and broken narratives lurk everywhere. In this dis turbed area, the domesticating presence of the human may dwindle down to a we are sus few tidying gestures. Halfway through "Wichita" held in pension, in the middle of nowhere: Take a meadow abandoned to real estate; the real estate abandoned to grass and weed; the sky, zinc; the north wind, iron; and banging, sliding, down the shadows of wheel ruts, down the long double lane of trees that lead to no abandoned farm house, no tumbled foundations; theway just stopping dead at the swampy crossing newer cut where tracks through. not This is Robert Bly's Midwest with its profound solitudes that sanction nor the inner life, James Wright's Midwest with its river town porches a retreat. as that offer the solace of Dana's silences emerge the deepest of are to a spaces, and his weeds tall enough swallow house. If anything, his Midwest resembles the slums and ghettos, the heedlessly dispersed seg ments a of once-prosperous city, where growth has been abrupt, dis jointed, unplanned. seems What hopelessly shattered, of course, may be only in need of the poet's attentive eye. But "Wichita" concludes unexpectedly: There, we're left to do what we can with the hawk driven off by the crow, the couple 117 of pines flanked south, and the rosebush, run wild and in tough the pale sun, flashing rose as hips bright any petals. You get all this like a slow post one card from of those tropical countries, the view fixed in one corner in the window of the stamp: cheap, exotic, vivid. For all his affection for this fallen world, Dana declines to redeem it. The hawk, the crow, the pines, the flowerless rosebush ?these together make no Yet on up community. the eye falls them longingly, husbanding them as as can swerve a with much congeniality be mustered. Why the toward Dana own con postcard? By swerving so, recoils from his impulse toward geniality. Is he mocking his yearning for order, judging it as all too prim? its as a to Or is he (The stamp fixes view neatly, window gaze through.) to out a scene savor taking subtle delight in his ability look upon and the is to nothing that there, relish details others would overlook? (The vulgar own ity of the stamp's official view has its sweep of energy.) sets Dana's wonderfully improbable ending, with its colliding of diver most swerve gent impressions, may draw attention away from the obvious to to he has taken: his shift direct address, speaking straight the reader. It is proper that this turn should be easiest to miss, however, for the lasting as effect of this poem is to render the isolation of its setting, as well the as isolation of the poet. That isolation remains beyond transformation, to as a on a resistant altering the official version of republic that circulates it cannot stamp. The poem's isolation commands the greatest authority; be broached. The poem revolves about it helplessly. What is so unnerving about Dana's poetry is that it brings forward the very isolation itwould overcome. The spaces in aDana poem seem unusu vast are "A ally because they filled with missed connections. Short History a roll of the Middle West" begins with venerable analogy comparing the to ocean ing land the swell and surge of the ocean, "an of dirt tilting and an is tipping." It is appealing image, but what Dana understands the so to human cost of living close this powerful force: 118 Its towns toss up on the distance, your distance like thewink of islands. Towns are as cut off as islands. The pronouns tell: the towns are "its," the Midwest's, the ocean's, but the distances between them are "the distance, your distance," that gap opening between persons into which we fall. are are too These gaps filled unsubstantially?they consequential, their too emptiness profound: Your neighbor out is early this morning?the air as raw already humid diamond. Drunk or lonely, he's scattering large scraps of white bread for birds as if it were winter. sour He'd give you the undershirt off ? his back sweet, bad man. Does he remember rain salting down from that flat, far shore of clouds slowly changing its story? On this shore, the trees all babbling with their hands? 119 we never a sure The cost of living in isolation is that have way to measure the propriety of another's gestures.
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