Volume LIV Number 7-8
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Books
Eyes Upon Some Inner Thing
Folk Tunes, by Alan Gould; Salt, 2009, 80 pages, $24.95.
Folk Tunes is one of the most enjoyable and intellectually engaging new volumes of verse I have read in recent years. It is Alan Gould’s most accomplished to date. Here we find the poet moving freely between light and serious verse and blurring the line between them, as the light carries the burden of the serious and the serious is relieved of its weight by its very sense of proportion and perspective. Whether serious or light, the poems in this volume are always consummately crafted, suggestive by turns of the structures of Gothic cathedrals on the one hand, and the sturdy yet delicate, perfectly designed skeletons of birds on the other—in both cases, the structures allow the poems to soar and cause the reader to “lift up heart, eyes”.
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