Leaping poetry

          Review: Dolphin Leaping the Milky Way, poems by Jeff

                         Poniewaz, Inland Ocean Books, 4540 S. 1st. St.,

                         Milwaukee, WI 53207, $6.95.

At the end of Jeff Poniewaz's collection of poems he offers a phonetic pronounciation of his name‑‑Poe‑nYEAH‑vAHsh.  He explains that the name is Polish for because.  Because is significant for it signals how it is that he connects his life with his art.  Because he has to, because both his art and his life would not be authentic without the connection. That is important. Also, that his name contains Poe, that too makes good sense if we see Poe as William Carlos Williams did as he explains in In the American Grain: "What he wanted was connected with no particular place; therefore it must be where he was."  Poniewaz is a poet not locked into a particular place but, through the integrity, the accumlated evidence of his collection of poems, the integrity of his stance, he is anywhere he happens to be.  His poems are examples of being, maintaining a committed relationship to his surroundings.  And so, his name again, the YEAH part is also important, like Molly Bloom's Yes: see the world for what it is, and still say Yes.

          Poniewaz mixes the music of culture and nature, treats both on equal terms‑‑Bruckner and the crickets.  That equality is his demonstration of his being true to what is our human condition, the mixture as our starting point.  He is trying to right the balance, we humans in a healthy relationship with all creatures. "Why," his poems ask, "isn't the death of a species played up as much as the death of a movie star?"  How do we face up to such a question?   His writing procedes from the absurdity of our condition in this consumer society, where all value is based on profit, and his answer is uncompromising commitment to the language of precision and liberation.  He plays with language with the seriousness of a generous nature, of a person who knows who he is, where he is.  He offers "Art vs. Artillery" where "poetry is the arch‑enemy of enmity."  He calls for the "eco" to be put back in "economics." Reagan is Ray‑gun.  We have heard these language games before, but that is part of the problem. Language games are serious, for we hear and do not really hear. Or we hear and do nothing.  We have been cut from the power of our own language, allowed the politicians and advertisers to use us against ourselves, to be alienated, aliens on our own planet, alien to the animals, plants, and people we need most to be connected to.  Poniewaz is giving us the opportunity to get on speaking terms with our eco‑family, with the language of our survival, to learn what the poet Charles Olson said was the hardest thing to learn: not to be estranged from what is most familiar. 

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