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To Talk of Many Things: Selected Poems
by Richard Greene
239 poems, 262 pages
Price: $15.00
Publisher: Amazon
ISBN: 978-0-6453437-6-2
To Order: Amazon
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
As I sit before my writing table on this date, September 8, the news is dominated by the death of Queen Elizabeth II. She was 96 years old. Her remarkable reign spanned 70 years, 15 British Prime Ministers, 14 American Presidents. Queen Elizabeth was a living witness to an incredible amount of history.
I thought about that as I finished reading Richard Greene’s superb collection, To Talk of Many Things: Selected Poems. Also, in his 9th decade, this amazing writer calls upon the resources of his life and times to create a collection rich in nostalgia, history, and practical life experiences. I found myself pausing, placing myself within his poems, thinking, Ah, yes! I remember that very thing so vividly.
When Greene announces that he is talking about many things, that is precisely what he means. Through 239 poems, there are few subjects that DO NOT find a place within his purview.
Richard Greene writes in Free Verse. His diction is crisp, friendly, accessible. He invites readers to join him on the patio for coffee and bagels shmeared with honey nut spread. However, don’t accept the invitation if you are looking for easy answers to life’s hard questions. This poet is wise, funny and best of all, ironic. Good poets surprise you at the end. I was continually surprised and chagrined.
I begin with “Confession”:
I’m a serial poet.
many times I’ve committed poetry,
taken an image, a feeling, a thought, a phrase
and manhandled it into a poem
I plead in mitigation
that it’s a crime of passion.
Or is it temporary insanity?
Your reviewer never saw that ending coming!! It’s like that throughout the collection. Just when I thought I had the poet “pegged” he turned the tables on me. That is exactly what makes this collection stand out.
Greene’s poems are about life, about things he saw or liked. “First Snow” was written in November of 1952 and reflects a certain “universal” mood:
Rain comes
painting a thousand mirrors
on the pavement,
a dense panorama
half formed
as in a dream.
Vehicles ply with caution
the melting streets,
the landscape in pools.
Then snow.
A man hurries by my window
his coat collar turned up round his chin.
As noted above, Greene has a special capacity for placing readers “in” his poems. The commonplace is among the poet’s favorite themes. After all, among the possible purposes of poetry, is elevating the ordinary. This happens in “Everyday Things”:
The sky that’s always with us
in light or darkness,
a radiance of moon,
the seasons,
the tree behind the house,
the birds that sing so tirelessly in its branches,
the shadow of leaves on a wall,
a spouses touch.
Should we cherish them any the less
for being commonplace?
Poems with titles such as “Firefly Time,” “Pie,” “Old Furnace,” “Smiles,” “Pudding,” and “Rain,” delighted me in elevating the ordinary–this is what poetry, at its best, should do.
Greene worked much of his life in a government position which afforded him travel opportunities to the “uttermost” parts of the world. He devotes several poems to his experiences in exotic places. You won’t want to miss these. I was especially moved by “Earthquake, Port-au-Prince, 2010”:
If we could hear all the cries from Haiti
we’d clap our hands over our ears
our faces twisted in pain.
If we could hear all the cries
from around this world
on almost any day
We’d be pressed to the ground
as if by a raging hurricane,
but we’ve learned not to listen,
or maybe never learned to hear.
My wife and I recently observed our 53rd wedding anniversary. Greene includes several tender and wise poems about marriage. “Silver Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair,” resonated with both me and my wife:
as if some cunning craftsman
had spun metal
into silken thread.
It was chestnut brown when we met.
Her skin, all smooth then,
has begun to show fine webs
and is slack under her once firm chin.
But, when I look on her, I think
this is the girl I wed
and feel the need to kiss her cheek
or, if she’s bent over some task,
the nape of her neck
or, if she’s sitting with the hem of her dress
resting on her thighs,
to reach out and touch her knee.
Richard Greene dedicates this collection to his 8th grade English teacher, Mrs. McCracken. Didn’t most of us have a Mrs. McCracken in our lives? I can’t help thinking that on a spring day in May, Mrs. McCracken, walked by Richard’s desk, peered over his shoulder, and found him writing something like this:
It was fine today,
this fifteenth of May,
flocks of fleecy clouds
grazing in cornflower fields
watered by yesterday’s rain.
To Talk of Many Things, by Richard Greene, will not disappoint. This collection does more than merely “talk.” It invites readers to walk in fields watered by yesterday’s rain.
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