Title: THEORY OF TRANSPORTATION
Author: Edward Barrett
Publisher: The Groundwater Press, New York

Edward Barrett studied Classics as an undergraduate. So it is not surprising that his poetry has always seemed an attempt to make sense of life in the down-to-earth way of a Socrates, a Lucretius, or a Marcus Aurelius, nor that the ease and effort of such an attempt show up in it; at times show through it as if amiable covering of a more private enterprise. For ease and effort are both characteristic of the will to understanding along a straight line. "An arrow travels in one fashion, but the mind in another," wrote Marcus Aurelius." Even when the mind is feeling its way cautiously and working round a problem from every angel, it is still moving directly onward and making toward its goal."

So Barrett's theory of transportation is not quite that, but a system of frequently stopping wherever he happens to find himself, not to get his bearings but to examine the weather, the things and the people around him for what they may turn out to be. It is, as he says, " a nonchalance that mounts to delectable but nonetheless rigorous morality: your father who loved to fish but always threw his catch back in." There is so much happening all around us, but it is difficult to know how much of it is useful or useless: is anything in our lives suitable as a gift? That seems to be the test of importance:" People are starting to come home from work and lights go on in apartments up and down the block. Can I give you this?" The answer each time seems to be no, since the poet "cannot plead a special case, some exception." If only that were possible. But if it were, the unrolling, the unraveling of life that makes its spell so invigorating even as it consumes itself, would come to a brisk halt. There would be nothing left to give.

John Ashbery