dissatisfying"
(31). Far from it--the dissatisfaction of the narrator is
essential to the Report's accuracy.
n this Romantic pilgrimmage Norris is the latest
in a long tradition of artists and writers that includes
Gaugin, Byron, Melville, and even Orwell. That he fails to
find the paradise he is seeking should surprise no one,
least of all Norris, who knows all along that nowhere is
beyond the reach of airplanes or satellite television.
Norris makes it clear in a number of poems that he is
searching in vain for the mythical "Garden." In "Romance at
Anchor in a Landscape of Dream," (14) he says "I return/to
this paradise still dreaming of completion,/knowing the
garden a lie, wholeness a lie,/yet wanting them." Norris is
in the absurd position of searching for innocence among
peoples who have been on the front line of nuclear arms
testing. Norris--like all of us--is trapped between dream
and reality. He illustrates this dilemma in "Marquesan
Dreams" (36), the book's finest poem:
 "It is
the Garden of Eden,"
he
tells us, and except for the Typee's
eccentric habits of cannibalism
and
keeping the skulls of departed ancestors
they
are as innocent as Adam and Eve
before
the Fall
 ......................................
He
walked out of the Garden (no, ran)
and
then, in later life, longed for return,
 
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