Nightshades by Michael Gessner

Nightshades by Michael Gessner: a Commentary

Nightshades, Michael Gessner’s new and presciently-titled collection of poems, manages to captivate the reader on its opening pages, beginning with a deadpan, impossibly earnest manifesto titled “Expectations”—followed immediately by a pair of anaphoric poems that seem almost gleeful in their savvy irreverence. The first, “Whifflings” (literally, the art of flying upside-down), is as darkly witty as the one that follows, titled “Dedications”—a blunt but oddly heartwarming list of some of humanity’s most dubious characteristics. All of these offer the reader a highly promising springboard into a unique poetic adventure.
Gessner, of course, is clearly a scholar. His familiarity with some of the mistier corners of Greek mythology is nothing if not impressive—as are his smart takes on certain societies of the present day (including our own). Credentials of this kind have resulted in this abundance of fine poems. Many are memorably understated, like ‘Weeding,” which I quote here in its entirety:

WEEDING

A wild thing in an unwanted place,
crabgrass, dandelion, rag weed,
party crashers choking gardens,

unnecessary as too many diacritical marks,
or poets who carry
the history of the human heart.

Another example, titled “Idolatry”, manages to convince us that right here, and all around us, the trees—(yes, the trees)— are listening; they tell us what we mean; they know their kind. Still another, called “Certainty”—bluntly asks why it is that our own neighbors, vicious as their dogs, can be so infuriatingly certain that something will intervene / between now and the next / tragedy.
But any further attempt on my part to cull brief quotes from Gessner’s poems does a disservice to their artfulness, and to the overall power of Nightshades as a collection. It deserves—even insists upon—a careful read from cover to cover.

—Marilyn L. Taylor, Poet Laureate of Wisconsin, author of Outside the Frame: New and Selected Poems, (2021)

Chiaroscuro is not just a technique of Renaissance painters; it is the way of the contemporary world. Michael Gessner’s Nightshades catches moments of light in lines, in stanzas – stanza in Italian means room – that brief time between becoming and ending; surfers and a wave (or just after); an image and a thought; shades half-pulled between light and dark; knowing and not knowing, offering an invitation to enter (yet also maintaining a certain distance). Edward Young wrote of the battle between ancients and moderns; hear in these poems neither conflict nor competition, but an appreciation of all possibilities for understanding through artistry.

—Dennis Barone, author of Frame Narrative

Michael Gessner’s enthusiasm for poetic synthesis is ably displayed in these mature poems of praise, myth, mystery and fervent search. Before the “great wall of eternal enigmas,” “the ghosts of history appear to reappear,” and in “the blue hour … of every ambition … [there is] Innocence in every motion that seeks / another ensemble, in the purity / that is only purity.” Nightshades’ soulful performances strike a balance of classic and modern. In their communing music, the reader is lifted, heartened and warmed.

—Elana Wolff, author of Swoon, winner of the 2020 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry

Biographical Note: Michael Gessner has authored 14 books of poetry and prose. From the most recent, (Selected Poems, 2016,) The Poetry Foundation selected several for its digital archive site, (2017). He has been a finalist in several competitions including 'Discovery/The Nation,' 'The Pablo Neruda Award,' and North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Prize. His work appears in The American Journal of Poetry, American Letters & Commentary, American Literary Review, The French Literary Review, Innisfree, Jacket2, Juniper, Kenyon Review, Nimrod, North American Review, Oxford Review, Pacific Review, Patterson Literary Review, Poem, Poetry Quarterly, Rue des Beaux-Arts (Paris,) Sycamore Review, Verse Daily, Wallace Stevens Journal, Web del Sol, Wisconsin Review, The Yale Journal of Humanities and others. He is a voting member of the National Book Critics Circle. Other publications and information may be found at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/michael-gessner or https://www.michaelgessner.com/

Book Information:

· Paperback: 108 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-395-9