This Pittsburgh-based poet's latest volume, selected by Eavan
Boland for 1997's National Poetry Series, wears its working-class
credentials on its sleeve. Gibb's neo-proletarian poems - arranged
on the page in the semblance of forms - moan and whimper about the
lost world of mill workers and the unique glow that defines the
industrial Pittsburgh and nearby Homestead. The past weighs so
heavily on the poet that he can't enjoy the weather ("Lines in a
Slow Thaw") without thinking of the great lockout of 1892. The only
greater burden is the memory of his father's madness ("Fathers and
Sons") and his cremation ("Fire Poem"), which he inevitably links
to the mill fires. "Entering the Oven" and "First Day" - two of the
strongest poems in the volume - both record in fiery verse the
poet's own time on the graveyard shift at the plant, and the
dizzying heat of working inside the great ovens. Elsewhere, Gibb's
subjects exist in solemn relation to his sounds: his celebrations
of music are themselves tone-deaf; and his defense of drunkenness
("Letter to a Friend's Wife") couldn't be more sober. Memories
intrude on the present in Gibb's somber verse, as drab and gray as
the cityscape that haunts him. (Kirkus Reviews)
Winner of the 1997 National Poetry Series, judged and selected by
Eavan Boland. Of the collection, Eavan Boland wrote: "The deft
language and lyric intent of these poems serve one purpose: slowly
and exactly they expose the dark, silvery images of a lost world.
Here is Pittsburgh at twilight, in the old dusk of the steel mills.
Here is a drug store, the Monongahela river, the trolleys and the
carbarns. And here is memory at its most scalding, intense, and
rigorous. This world is never regretted, never mourned for. There
is no elegy here because not a single detail in this remarkable
landscape has ceased to exist. It is all there, all alive, all
available to language. This is a rare and forceful book of poems."
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