Second Space : New Poems

Rating:
Summary: Spiritually luminous, lyrically elegant...(20 Stars!)
Review: Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz'first collection of poetry publiblished since his death this past August continues to reveal the man as perhaps the 20th century's greatest poet. Students of literature familiar with his work marvel at the depth of his insight into the human conditions most challenging quandaries.His range of experience...in formative political, philosophical and religious movements of our modern-segueing-into-Post Modern age of Anxiety and violence...is nothing short of astounding. His artistic expression thereof,comprises genius.

SECOND SPACE resonates with profundity. Yet Milosz'art is astonishingly void of linguistic pyrotechnics or artifice. The erudition of Eliot...or Dante himself...is manifest without recourse to numbingly recondite metaphor,scholarship or ars- gratias-artist machinery.This"poet for all seasons"is startlingly straight-forward;lyrically"simple".Like reprise of St.Augustine's CONFESSIONS[or his own(1995)FACING the RIVER], Milosz directly states intention to remember with honor;and...in PRAYERful acknowledgement and humility...if possible, RECOVER the
source and ultimate respite of Mankind's humanity. TRUTH...peace and salvation; or condign damnation...is the province and provenance of THE SECOND SPACE.

Challenging the epigones(& tenth-rate homies of the PM Press)of Nietzsche and hack-Heideggerians,Milosz replies to the brazen, self-POSSESSED;self-apotheosizing nihilists foreseen by Dostoyevsky:
"IF THERE IS NO GOD,NOT EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED TO MAN/ HE IS STILL HIS BROTHER'S KEEPER/AND HE IS NOT PERMITTED TO SADDEN HIS BROTHER,BY SAYING THERE IS NO GOD(p.5)."

Spiritually luminous,lyrically elegant poem-after-poems rebuke: Scientism [p.25:"The beauty of nature is suspect/Oh yes,the splendor of flowers: SCIENCE is concerned to deprive us of illusions/Though why it is eager to do so is unclear..."].Rank materialism ["What have they left us?...Only the accountancy of a capitalist enterprise"].Pseudo-wisdom & the occult...WHEN THE SUN RISES/IT ILLUMINATES STUPIDITY AND GUILT.WHICH ARE HIDDEN IN THE NOOKS OF MEMORY/AND INVISIBLE AT NOON(p.34).
DESPAIR of the PM Sophists(who attack the Sacred...in the womb;the marriage bed and the TABERNACLE itself):"Hear me,Lord! Protect me from the day of dryness and impotence/When neither a swallow's flight nor peonies,daffodils and irises in the flower market are a sign of your glory/WHEN I WILL BE SURROUNDED BY SCOFFERS,AND UNABLE...AGAINST THEIR ARGUMENTS...TO REMEMBER ANY MIRACLE OF YOURS/When I will seem to myself an imposter and swindler because I take part in religious rites/When I accuse YOU of establishing the universal law of death/WHEN I AM READY AT LAST TO BOW DOWN TO NOTHINGNESS/AND CALL LIFE ON EARTH
A DEVIL'S VAUDVILLE/Hear me Lord,for I am a sinner/which means I have nothing except prayer!"(p.24)

Yet THIS POET does not lack wicked humor:"And Katie? She does not want to be saved/At the price of an innocent man...Her father kneels every Sunday at his church/Because what would you introduce in place of his religion?...Perhaps the idiotic rituals
of THE PARTY/ Or football games ending in a brawl(p.38)."
Nor does CZESLAW MILOSZ ever lack HOPE["May the day of your death...be of trust in the light that shines through earthly forms" p.12);"Yet I repeat,'I believe in God'."(p.20)

And in the End...which this heroic philosopher and poet went to on August 14,2004,Czeslaw Milosz(with ever able assistance of his friend,fellow poet-and-translator,Robert Hass)declares in ultimate, poetic testimony to God and Goodness: SUN.AND SKY./AND IN THE SKY WHITE CLOUDS/ONLY NOW EVERYTHING CRIED TO HIM/EURYDICE!...HOW WILL I LIVE WITHOUT YOU,MY CONSOLING ONE!
BUT THERE WAS A FRAGRANT SCENT OF HERBS/THE LOW HUMMING OF BEES(Winnie-the-Pooh is back in action!)/AND HE FELL ASLEEP WITH HIS CHEEK ON THE SUN-WARMED EARTH......(p.102)

Amen,Amen I say to you:TAKE AND READ!(20 stars)