n an
interview in Quarry(1988)
Ken Norris tells Bruce Meyer that "I tend to think of my
books as parts of a collage or mosaic. I try not to stay in
one mode for too long...I think the worst thing a poet can
do is develop a style" (87), but elsewhere he claims that
"the achievement of the 'poetic' is a very specific thing"
("Some notes on the Composition of Poetry" 100).
orris balances variety
with specificity by cultivating great stylistic diversity
which he then applies to a fairly circumscribed set of
preoccupations. They include his Romantic quest for
transcendence, his consistent use of love affairs as
metaphor, and his obsession with poetics and the question of
what it is to be a poet.
egetables(1975;
rpt. 1976) is an impressive debut volume. He uses the whole
book as a unit of construction. His theme is the poet as
creator of unity and wholeness in the world of fragmenting
values. The book attains its finest moment in "Vegetable
Stew" (np) in which the process of making a stew becomes
analogous to the poet's ability to unite disparate elements
within his vision of life.
hroughout his career
Norris has been tortured by doubts that any contemporary
poet--himself included-can achieve the kind of unifying
vision that older poets have been able to create. He often
takes on the persona of a man at odds with himself--a body
inhabited by two conflicting selves. As he explores this
conflict in Underthe
Skin(1976),
his second book, he experiments with the persona in almost
every poem. In "GUIDEDTOUR" (np)
he is an old reformed drunk with a history of skid row life,
attempted suicide, and psychoanalysis.
n an
interview in Quarry
(1988)
Ken Norris tells Bruce Meyer that "I tend to think of my
books as parts of a collage or mosaic. I try not to stay in
one mode for too long...I think the worst thing a poet can
do is develop a style" (87), but elsewhere he claims that
"the achievement of the 'poetic' is a very specific thing"
("Some notes on the Composition of Poetry" 100).
orris balances variety
with specificity by cultivating great stylistic diversity
which he then applies to a fairly circumscribed set of
preoccupations. They include his Romantic quest for
transcendence, his consistent use of love affairs as
metaphor, and his obsession with poetics and the question of
what it is to be a poet.
egetables
hroughout his career
Norris has been tortured by doubts that any contemporary
poet--himself included-can achieve the kind of unifying
vision that older poets have been able to create. He often
takes on the persona of a man at odds with himself--a body
inhabited by two conflicting selves. As he explores this
conflict in Under