Eric Ormsby, born in Atlanta, is a professor of Near Eastern Studies at McGill University, and his poetry has been published in major American and Canadian literary periodicals, and is included in the current Norton Anthology of Poetry. I suspect that this is not enough to convince a reader who is not somehow obligated to do so to pick up his latest book of poetry, For a Modest God. Which is unfortunate, for it is that rarest of books of modern poetry – one that deserves to be widely read.
The book is divided into three sections, the first containing new poems, the second and third containing poetry already published in Bavarian Shrine and Other Poems (1990) and Coastlines (1992), respectively. Those poems selected from the two earlier books, which were published in Canada and are now available to the larger American market, are not as accomplished as the new poetry in For a Modest God, but are good work that shows most of Ormsby’s preoccupations.
In “Anhinga,” he writes of seeing the black birds: It’s almost reverential for those,/ like me, with worshipful proclivities. Ormsby brings the same attitude of reverence to bear on everything he sees, and he sees so very well. The title poem is an exercise in minutiae, and the various poems about natural things – “The Ant Lion,” “Rooster,” “Skunk Cabbage,” “What It Is Like to Be a Bat” – are reminiscent of John Donne’s “The Flea,” without the drive towards encompassing understanding at the end.
The new poems are powerfully analytical, taking meticulous and sensitive observation and giving it some place in the world. Or, they are reminiscent, not cloyingly so, but refreshing. Or, they are historical explorations, evoking the time and place and sensibility of the period. Ormsby is no one-trick poet. He is able to finish on a climax, as he often does, with the language gaining in power and building upon the earlier meticulously reported description. But he is also able, as he does in “Coastlines,” to end a poem on a quiet note, questioning, perhaps, rather than demonstrating. Coastlines, indeed, are one of Ormsby’s important icons, perhaps his most important.
Ormsby’s poetry shows the author’s ability to be open to scientific possibility without
analyzing to dissect, which is the besetting
sin of the quotidian scientist. In description reminiscent of Robert Frost, he is a poet both modern and traditional, and very skilled.
For a Modest God is a brilliant book.