Gondwana: an ancient supercontinent long-dispersed into fragments
in the Southern Hemisphere. Contemplating this once-massive
landmass at the the end of the world while looking out at the
ethereal blue ice of Antarctica, Nathaniel Tarn writes: "They said
back then / there was a frozen continent / in those high latitudes
encircling the globe: /are you moving toward it?" The various parts
of Gondwana cohere into a unified whole that celebrates bird
flight, waves, and innervating light while warning against
environmental calamity. Some poems celebrate the New Mexican desert
as it becomes a place of protest against the invasion of
Afghanistan; in another, the rising and falling stairs at Fez in
Morocco meld into a meditation on marriage, empire, and the origins
of climbing. Elsewhere the heroic fighter pilot Lydia Litvyak is
personified as Eurydice speaking to her Captain as Orpheus; and in
the final long section, "Exitus Generis Humani," lines pour over
the reader in slow, mournful, yet often humorous, song, revealing
"the poets' hearts are a world's heart" as the human race ends and
whole armies sink into the earth "yearning for mother love."
Celebrated as a poet where "inquiry and ethical action are
imperative" (Joseph Donahue, Jacket2), Nathaniel Tarn has lifted up
a mind-heart mirror of our contemporary existence in Gondwana and
warns us of a definitive ending if we do not demand radical change.
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