Sherry Chandler

Steven DaGama’s Passages (Wavelength/Albireo Press, 2005) is as cynical as Brooks Carver’s Pilgrim Heart is romantic. Passages is filled with terrorists and exiles, soldiers and travelers, music and lovers.

I feel too dull-witted to comment on the prosody – it is somewhat imagistic, very masculine, but clear and sure-footed. There may or may not be a woman’s poetry (see discussion of the question here), but I would characterize this definitely as man’s poetry, filled with mysterious women and exotic locations. Come to think of it, I’ll take back what I said. This collection is also romantic, though it’s the romance of noir.

I can appreciate Passages for its commentary on the modern condition. It is a poetry of witness. Here is a section from one of my favorite poems in the collection:

Sandstorm

Everything we see is something else.
— Fernando Pessoa

In the nightmare, deployment
is familiar, not so the terrain.
A shifting sandscape, male, never female,
women never — Women cook, Men assume

crucial tasks: they devastate.
Through sandstorm and heat shimmer
humps rise, sink, rise, sink. Everlasting
columns of boy-men, man-boys

sandblasted. …

DaGama is also a visual artist. He drew the cover illustration.

I’m not sure how this collection came to be in my mailbox on Christmas eve. I suspect because I subscribe to Wavelength. Nor am I sure how you would acquire a copy or how much it would cost. I’ll ask David Rogers and get back to you.