Gibson, Margaret.
Autumn Grasses.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2003. 96 pp.
The
inspiration for most of the poems in Autumn Grasses was a daily engagement
calendar that features the art of Japan - screens, hanging scrolls,
painted silks, wood-block prints. In the dynamic stillness of this
new visual field, Margaret Gibson steps away from the merely personal
- "No one's home" - to write poems that dip and swoop with the unguarded
ease of birds in flight, verse as fluid and seamless as the movement
of day to night, season to season. Trusting the power of unknowing,
of imagination, these poems are delicate reminders of English-based
forms filled with the spirit of Zen.
Autumn Grasses is both elegant and spontaneous, vivid and
wise. Gibson's rapt engagement with Japanese art has produced swift
insight, detail that dazzles, a voice that can range from the serene
to the earthy, always with a commitment to seeing each thing as it
is, entering each moment with presence and zest.
The
inspiration for most of the poems in Autumn Grasses was a daily engagement
calendar that features the art of Japan - screens, hanging scrolls,
painted silks, wood-block prints. In the dynamic stillness of this
new visual field, Margaret Gibson steps away from the merely personal
- "No one's home" - to write poems that dip and swoop with the unguarded
ease of birds in flight, verse as fluid and seamless as the movement
of day to night, season to season. Trusting the power of unknowing,
of imagination, these poems are delicate reminders of English-based
forms filled with the spirit of Zen.