[ARETE] Review of Ron Smith, The Beauty

[Duncan Jamieson]

All,
Please find attached and below Jack Ridl's Review of The Beauty of the Trees by Ron Smith
Thanks
Duncan

Review of That Beauty in the Trees by Ron Smith, LSU Press, 2023
Don’t bother reading this review, just go read masterful poet Ron Smith’s That
Beauty in the Trees. And what is that “that”?
Ron Smith is subtle, nuanced, clearly ambiguous, rich in layers of implication. His
poems don’t talk to you. They lead you into a world where you participate and
wonder.
Reviews often attempt to make up your mind for you or draw attention to the
intelligence of the reviewer. Or they reveal the reviewer’s insights for a resume:
tenure’s on the line.
Do something more important than the impotent notion that evaluation makes a
difference. W. H. Audin retracted his ridiculous and yet still perpetrated line,
“Poetry makes nothing happen..” Set aside your educated notion of the importance
of critical evaluation, and something will happen. Bring your vulnerability and
attentiveness, and something valuable will happen. And in this discordant time
when language is used to mislead, twist intention, cause cruelty, annihilate
reputations, misdirect, impose nihilistic solutions, grant permission to unleash
hatred, poems and most certainly Ron Smith’s poems can save moments within our
lived lives.
Should I end there? Sure.
I know I should support such exclamations even though I’d prefer to let the work
do that, and I’ll go walk our dog. First of all, Smith (Can I call him Ron for
Aethlon readers? Sure.) First of all, Ron’s book of poems is inconsistent. And it
lacks coherence. Ron dares to violate the preeminent ideas held in a hammerlock
that a collection of poems should “hold together,” be thematic, have a structural
coherence, tonal consistency, and recognizable voice, (Whatever that is.) one made
familiar by the fourth poem, one that remains familiar until we’re asleep.
Because this review is for Aethlon readers, I’ll offer some poems where Ron works
with sports.
In “Rizal Stadium, WorldWar II” (p. 24) he creates a convincing fusion of baseball,
killing, the body strewn landscape of war, the speaker’s ability to take “bad hops in
the heart then firing a/frozen rope (yes) frozen rope to first,” his “father who’s right
now fighting/ for his life on Guadalcanal,” Rod Serling, Episode 19 of The
Twilight Zone,” sudden commentary, and more to create the reality of innocence
and horror that was then and, when we reflect, is now. Ron makes it seamless, and
seamless it becomes for us no matter how accomplished we are at
compartmentalizing.
This is one of the great accomplishments throughout the collection: to refrain from
isolating experiences and instead give us the “blenderized” world we live within.
Read “Birth of Modern Poetry” (p. 88). Every line turns at the right moment; the
poem “flows” in the voices of Pound and Williams and you’ll laugh and wonder if
Ron means it, and wonder about modern poetry itself and notice Ron’s mastery of
free verse while he parodies it, or does he? And it’s a multi-persona poem where
Ron, or is it Ron? steps in. Every line begins at the left edge: how formal and
controlled and common. You now and then stop at moments such as when WCW,
talking about Hemingway and Pound going at it— “ ‘Pound [falling] back upon his
settee.’/1922. the year of litrachur’s nuclear atrocities, Hem wrote/ that Ez led ‘wit
his chin’ and had the general grace/ of a crayfish,’ whatever that means.”
Then after the delight of that “formally free verse” Laurel and Hardy perceptive
fiasco you note a poem where the subject offers a revelation in varied line stanzas,
a poem tapestried into various juxtapositions that bring a fresh perspective in
fragments, short lines, long lines, single lines, couplets, varied in position on the
page, syncopated in rhythm. For example—
“Riefenstahl” (p. 56) Hitler’s Olympics film maker where we read
“and less
bat-
tired, brushed
by tender woodwinds, faces, fluent bodies
mist enfolded, invested, draped, touch them, smooth them,
as the camera turns
them
into
gesture . . .”
Images? Well, in one poem there’s “anchovy sauce, fried artichokes, and gusts of
garlic,” then in another you’re with Willyum Wumpus, then on Omaha Beach, in
Plato’s cave, Rome, Assisi, or the marsh water of Savannah. You’ll meet up with
Mussolini, Keats, Casanova, Jesus, George Washington.
Attend to three poems a day. Three. The poems welcome your participation and
rewards your imagination and intellect and delight and sorrowful remembrance.
Spoiler alert, I’m giving away the ending—
“that we must say, we do say, we will
always
say is a kind
of beauty.”
Jack Ridl, author of Practicing to Walk Like a Heron (Wayne State University
Press), co-recipient of ForeWord Review”s award for the year’s best collection of
poetry
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