Infused with Mediterranean landscapes, the poems of Litanies
Near Water, Paula Closson Buck's second collection, probe the
world through language that acts sometimes like a divining rod and
sometimes like a lightning rod. Elegant meditative lyrics such as
"You Cannot Love the Wind" and "Theory of an Impersonal God" answer
to politically alert poems like "Monk Killed by Tractor in Bid to
Dodge Police." Ultimately, in Buck's deft hand, the lyrical quest
for understanding becomes a form of diplomacy between the physical
and the metaphysical, between instances of beauty and the violence
that threatens daily.
From "Last Days"
The waiter unbuttons
his white shirt briskly,
pulls until it billows
and the tails fly free,
then wipes the tables clean.
I am driving the mountain road
behind a farmer's pickup.
One cow rides supine in the back;
from the two who straddle her,
thrown on the curves,
a rear leg splays out over the bed.
I lay on the horn, follow at a distance.
I weep, I linger these last days,
knowing what I know.
On a jag of sadness
for things that happen once
or not at all, or that never should,
I am eating with the lights off,
the crush of jasmine
so sweet I can't think straight.
Paula Closson Buck, author of The
Acquiescent Villa, teaches creative writing at Bucknell
University and is editor of the literary magazine West
Branch. She lives with her family in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
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