Another Look: Poems

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Another Look: Poems 1976, Holt McDougal

ISBN-13: 9780030153969

Hardcover

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Books by Horace Gregory

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Gissinglover

Feb 11, 2019

Another Look At Horace Gregory

The American poet Horace Gregory (1898 -- 1982) is little read today, but his works have meant a great deal to me over the years. I came across his early poems of the New York City downtrodden while in law school in the early 1970s: and somewhere along the line I purchased his Collected Poems published in 1965. I still remember purchasing his last book of poetry, "Another Look" when finding it on the shelves of a small bookstore in 1976. There are few places where one could make such a find today. Both the "Collected Poems" and "Another Look" are still in my library.

Gregory was born in my home town of Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Irish ancestors that had come to Wisconsin in the mid-19th Century. He taught English for many years at Sarah Lawrence College and translated Ovid and Catullus from the Latin in addition to his work as poet, essayist and critic. Gregory received the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1965. A small selection of his work is included in the second volume of the Library of America's anthology "American Poetry: The Twentieth Century".

It had been some time since I had read Horace Gregory, and I wanted to take Another Look at the time-worn volume on my shelves with that name consisting of twenty-one short poems. Some of the poems I remembered brought back memories. Others were difficult when I read them at first and remained difficult on this revisit. I came to love the book again.

The poems tend to be unrhymed but metered. Gregory's works are highly allusive and literary with most of the allusions involving the classics. Allusions to Greek and Roman mythology abound in many poems while some of the works specifically involve figures such as Empedocles, Epictetus, and Ovid and his story of Corrina and the cutting of her hair. There are also allusions to figures such as James Whistler, the American biographer Paul Murray Kendall's book about Louis XI, Gregory's friend, the classical scholar Dudley Fitts, and the house at which the infamous "Birth of a Nation" was filmed.

Many of the poems are in form of dramatic monologues that Gregory had used from his earliest poems. Others use multiple speakers interlaced with commentary from the poet. Some poems have a short initial comment setting the stage. The many references in the poetry make it difficult but with readings become poignant and effective. The predominant tone is elegiac. The poems are clearly the work of an elderly poet facing death and also looking back at his life. Just as the book offered the reader Another Look at Gregory's poetry, it offered the poet another look at himself. Some of the poems express despair and loss with the contemporary world. But there is also a strong sense of hope.

The poem I remembered best from "Another Look" was "To a Last Wedding Guest". This poem is in part in the words of a young beautiful woman in white at her wedding. She is still a virgin, and she celebrates her marriage and impending sexual union with her husband in the form of the wedding cake, giving something of herself to her guests as she will give herself that evening to her husband. The final guest arrives late as the celebration is ending. The poem concludes:

"The belated wedding guest who had missed the bride
Stands in the hall
As though he had seen the reflection on her face,
Heard lips that say, 'Or early guest or late,
Eat of my cake. It is my life.
It is why you came.
It is my gift to everyone,
Even to the last fragment on a covered plate.'"

I didn't remember the final two poems in the book from my earlier readings but they moved me upon taking Another Look. The poem "& Testament" tells the story of Gregory's grandfather, an Irish mathematician who moved to Wisconsin and published a book in Ireland about the resources of his new home. The poem alludes to his early life, his travel to Wisconsin, his death, and his spiritual testament. In "April Morning", the final poem, the poet celebrates his birthday, looks back on his life, and meditates on impending death:

"It is not the season, but the inevitable
return of seasons that unshapes the days, the hours
caught in the mind, and builds them new again."

Revisiting a long-lost book is finding an old dear friend. I was moved at returning to take Another Look at the poems of Horace Gregory. His work deserves to be remembered.

Robin Friedman

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