Given Rosenstock’s long and prolific career, it is unsurprising to find that the poems chosen for this volume differ considerably in their style and form. A wide spectrum of metrical formats and stanzaic patterns characterize the volume, yet throughout all of these variations can be heard a consistent and easily recognizable voice. That voice is an intellectual one, eager, searching, at times struggling to define and re-define experiences and reflections of many sorts. It is a voice for which language itself represents a peculiar mixture of opportunities and limitations. As he expresses it in his poem SPRACHE (LANGUAGE), which I’ll quote here — ironically enough — in English:
And when Frank Corcoran
writes to me from Hamburg
the medley is wonderful:
Tipperary Irish
(I know, it’s extinct)
German
Maynooth Latin (
I know…)
Italian
and a few marginal notes
of faltering glissando.
I know how he feels.
These days to say nothing any way reasonable
is difficult in any language …
issaki no kaki ku’u muku wo yurushi oku
as Yoshiko Yoshino might say