Only So Far - Softcover

Cording, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 193388049X ISBN 13: 9781933880495

Publisher: Cavankerry Press, 2015

Synopsis

In Only So Far, Cording's poetry vacillates between complaint and praise, lamenting and loving our ""sowre-sweet dayes"" as George Herbert's poem ""Bittersweet"" puts it. Behind the book lies the story of the Promised Land that Moses never quite reaches, and those ""little daily miracles"" that Virginia Woolf says stand in as a kind of recompense for the ""great revelation"" that never does come. Poets and poetry readers will embrace Cording's eighth book of poems. His work is of interest to librarians and ministers in seminary programs.

About this title

Review:

"Only So Far is a perfectly wonderful book. I say 'perfectly' not as a gush word but because, true to its etymology from perfectus, 'thoroughly made, accomplished, fully realized, ' the book is one thoroughly, fully realized poem after another, his voice and its language seeking out the importance of even such a slight thing as breaking open a leaf of mint and experiencing its clean sweet smell, and finding its meaning in these lines, 'believing for a moment / that the past can be present / again, and history says more / than nothing lasts, and somehow / my life, unfinished, uncertain, / like a secret inside a secret, / is part of what is, like this mint, / pulled upward by the light, / by the day which only knows / again and again, to begin.' And there's the one about the moment of sunset in a Florida sea, where the genially described vanities of cocktail sunset human conversation are silenced by what's seen in these lines: 'So much time is lost trying to agitate / the envies of others and monitor one's own-- / the thought that crossed my mind as I watched / six pelicans rise and fall with the water's flux. /The winds had quieted, and just before the sun plunged / below the sea, the pelicans rose in a wind-hung line / and flew off, silent as a council of gods / in the pinkish sky. Palm trees scratched / their cuneiform shadows on the sand.' Peerless lines, perfectly wonderful. And perfectly characteristic of the powers of utterance in this wonderful book. Over and over, in this book, such gifts are offered. The quiet voice in these poems, calmly studying its own experience, cannot avoid the knowledge of its own mastery and its capacity to offer such pleasures. Hence the beautiful serene authority of tits writing, its versification, its syntactical elegance."--David Ferry

Only So Far is a perfectly wonderful book. I say 'perfectly' not as a gush word but because, true to its etymology from perfectus, 'thoroughly made, accomplished, fully realized, ' the book is one thoroughly, fully realized poem after another, his voice and its language seeking out the importance of even such a slight thing as breaking open a leaf of mint and experiencing its clean sweet smell, and finding its meaning in these lines, 'believing for a moment / that the past can be present / again, and history says more / than nothing lasts, and somehow / my life, unfinished, uncertain, / like a secret inside a secret, / is part of what is, like this mint, / pulled upward by the light, / by the day which only knows / again and again, to begin.' And there's the one about the moment of sunset in a Florida sea, where the genially described vanities of cocktail sunset human conversation are silenced by what's seen in these lines: 'So much time is lost trying to agitate / the envies of others and monitor one's own / the thought that crossed my mind as I watched / six pelicans rise and fall with the water's flux. /The winds had quieted, and just before the sun plunged / below the sea, the pelicans rose in a wind-hung line / and flew off, silent as a council of gods / in the pinkish sky. Palm trees scratched / their cuneiform shadows on the sand.' Peerless lines, perfectly wonderful. And perfectly characteristic of the powers of utterance in this wonderful book. Over and over, in this book, such gifts are offered. The quiet voice in these poems, calmly studying its own experience, cannot avoid the knowledge of its own mastery and its capacity to offer such pleasures. Hence the beautiful serene authority of tits writing, its versification, its syntactical elegance. David Ferry"

Robert Cording's poems are so stripped-down, so lacking in affectation they almost fly beneath the radar. Almost. Except for the fact that every few stanzas, every few lines, something strobes forth to make us catch our breath: an arrow of wit, a shot of pure sorrow, the ripple of an apparently effortless interior rhyme. Cording weds eye to heart and intellect to mystery with a power that devastates, arouses, and not infrequently delivers startling consolation. Leah Hager Cohen"

"Robert Cording's poems are so stripped-down, so lacking in affectation they almost fly beneath the radar. Almost. Except for the fact that every few stanzas, every few lines, something strobes forth to make us catch our breath: an arrow of wit, a shot of pure sorrow, the ripple of an apparently effortless interior rhyme. Cording weds eye to heart and intellect to mystery with a power that devastates, arouses, and not infrequently delivers startling consolation."--Leah Hager Cohen

About the Author:

ROBERT CORDING teaches English and creative writing at College of the Holy Cross where he is Professor of English and Barrett Professor of Creative Writing. He has published seven collections of poems: Life-list (Ohio State University Press/Journal award, 1987); What Binds Us to This World (Copper Beech Press, 1991); Heavy Grace, (Alice James, l996); Against Consolation (CavanKerry, 2002); Common Life, (CavanKerry, 2006); Walking with Ruskin (CavanKerry, 2010); and A Word in My Mouth: Selected Spiritual Poems (Wipf and Stock, 2013).

About this edition

• Publisher: Cavankerry Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 193388049X
• ISBN 13: 9781933880495
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80