Review of UNANSWERED CALLS: A Book of Poems (Larry Rubin), "Rattling the Academy"
Ranked #7,114 in Arts , #182,323 overall
Author: Larry Rubin
Title: Unanswered Calls: a Book of Poems
Paperback: 67 pages
Publisher: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company (January 1997)
ISBN: 0787243760
Price: $12.00
Rating: Five Stars
* * * * *
Rattling the Academy
Georgia poet Larry Rubin does not shout; he whispers, whispers reverberating as the reader dips into Unanswered Calls: a Book of Poems. These quiet, wry poems cut to the root of a life fully lived with a promise of more years to come.
Rubin, a lover of Emily Dickinson and a contemporary of Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and Anne Sexton, was born on Valentine's Day, 1930. A life-long bachelor, he taught at Georgia Tech for 44 years, retiring in 1999. A Fulbright Scholar and recipient of the Smith-Mundt Award from the U.S. State Department, Rubin has traveled extensively, both domestically and abroad.
The poet offers a secret slice of his world--but only that sliver needed for universal understanding. Many of the poems, tinged with overtones of past, present, and impending death, are part love, part wistful, and part disappointed, addressed or directed to the speaker's mother, father, sister, friends, and other poets. Some are travel poems; yet others sling humorous darts at the publishing industry.
This collection is divided into six parts: "Growing Up on the Beach," "Cracking the Coffin," "Between My Stainless Sheets," "Rattling the Bones," "Information Based Upon a Memo Leaked by Our Sources, and "Lunging Toward Light." In organizing this collection, the poet has clearly contemplated his own mortality.
The reader will not find so-called "edgy" experimental poems here, but, rather, well-crafted work with soulfulness and clear surface meaning.
It is the subtext which offers up surprises. In "The Son, Condemned," the speaker describes a failed and physically painful telephone connection with his father during a thunderstorm. On the surface, the poem depicts a literal image of nature trumping technology, but also intimating a complicated relationship between a father and son:
"And his voice does not get through/....This night all rods are wired to his revenge:/ He wanted grandsons forged in chains of light/And now he'll spot the withered link, and strike"--echoes of Emily Dickinson's "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass" poem.
In "At the Birth of My First Child," a Jewish father laments to his son, who is not likely to continue the family's lineage:
"I gave the essence of my self,/ I gave what I could give. I tried./ Still not enough. My son, you'll die."
The bachelor son yet again disappoints the father, depriving him of his due immortality.
Rubin reveals the surfaces of his life, but unlike many of his contemporaries, he never confesses anything definitively--one will not find embarrassing moments splashed across the page, although the poems in "Between My Stainless Sheets" hint of a life experienced fully. In "Registered at the Bordello Hotel (Vienna)," the speaker concludes,
"By dawn all rooms are empty/ Between my stainless sheets/ I sleep in the sweat of a single heart."
In "Lines for a Poet, After Her Shock Treatments," Rubin addresses a Plath-esque character who is caught in the cultural gender gap of the 1950's:
"You squint at me/ And smile in the phantom way of girls/ Uncertain of their escort to the prom./ Tentative, you wait for dreams to pass,..."
One gets the sense that the confessional poets, as they sling the muck of their lives all over the world stage, bewilder Rubin as he goes about creating vivid links between his past and present.
Rubin seems to have forged a literary connection with Emily Dickinson, an outsider poet during her lifetime. Some of Rubin's poems echo Dickinson's style and offer a male counterpart to her voice. In "Growing Up on the Beach," the speaker begins,
"Always the waters waiting/ Just beyond the wall--/ Always the lifeguards listening/ For cries of the final call."
Like his literary heroine, Larry Rubin has been vastly undervalued as a poet of note. The poet recognizes his lack of recognition in "The Editors," who have dismissed the speaker's work as obsessive and having a "morbid concern with death." The speaker says,
"They preferred concern with squirrels/ And spring, and mating habits along suburban/ Lakes, mustard seeds and pearls, and little/ Boats that row around the Cape."
In 2006, "The Editors" may very well be thirty-year-old owners of online journals, in search of the mating habits of gangsta rappers.
Rubin incorporates his travel into his poetry; a confirmed aviophobic, the poet continues to sail when he travels to Europe. In his travel descriptions, he captures the loneliness of temporary displacement:
"Once the wharf moves backwards...,/ And laws of the land fade toward that curve/ Horizon draws,/ The waves are bunched into bouquets,/ One vast flower of the sea;/ The passengers glide along the deck/ And speak to break the outer silences/ Crystallizing in the vacuum."
Clarity of surface is the hallmark of Larry Rubin's poetry. At the yearly conference of the College English Association (CEA), Rubin facilitates a poetry workshop in which he stresses the concept of the "simple" surface meaning as a vital and necessary element of poems.
One cannot just read Unanswered Calls; these poems must be experienced through the lens of the speaker, Larry Rubin himself, and his fascinating life. These poems, by virtue of their non-trendiness, will outlast much of the "relevant" work coming out of M.F.A. programs today.
If you can find this book, grab it, and never let it slip out of your life.
__________________________
Reference: Literature: Larry Rubin (b. 1930)
Read full bio in link module below.
Larry Rubin Bio
Bio excerpt
LARRY RUBIN(b. February 14, 1930)
_____________________
Larry Jerome Rubin has published hundreds of poems in literary magazines and four volumes of verse since he came to Atlanta in 1950 and began his long academic career as an English professor at the Georgia Insitute of Technology in 1956.
(Click on link in next module for complete biography)
Larry Rubin Bio (continued)
Poet Extraordinaire
- Larry Rubin (b. 1930)
- (Larry Rubin Bio continued from previous module).
James Dickey's Review
"The poetry of Larry Rubin is a fine resource for us. However, the author is so self-effacing as to be almost invisible; for many years he has functioned as a powerful creative current running beneath the surface of American life. With this book he emerges into full daylight with all his explosive power, his subtlety and originality, and fortunate are those among us who have the intelligent sensibility to connect with him."* * * * *
James Dickey's text is from the front cover of UNANSWERED CALLS.
More Larry Rubin
- Profile of Larry Rubin (by Shawn Jenkins)
- A Man of Letters:
Professor and poet Larry Rubin bids adieu to Georgia Tech.
By his own admission, Dr. Larry Rubin is a technophobe: He doesn't interface. He doesn't log on. He doesn't download or upgrade--unless it involves replacing his old typewriter ribbon with a new one. The only link from from his third floor office in Georgia Tech's Skiles Building to the outside world is a phone. Rotary. No voice mail.
(Jenkin's profile continued)
A Poem: "The Editors"
by Larry Rubin
THE EDITORSA morbid concern with death, they said, and sent
The poems back, picturing the runt
Who wrote, checking daily on his morning
Cancer. They preferred concern with squirrels
And spring, and mating habits along suburban
Lakes, mustard seeds and pearls, and little
Boats that row around the Cape. Readers
Like to muse upon the girl who swings
Her crossed leg in the college library, and what
She's really thinking. When autumn comes, the squirrels
Have nuts enough--the mustard seeds have bloomed,
The pearls are strung, the oysters in the boat.
The girl with legs has long been satisfied.
*
A morbid concern with death, they said, and died.
_______________
From UNANSWERED CALLS
Reprinted with poet's permission
God Opens His Mail
by Larry Rubin
GOD OPENS HIS MAILDear Sir:
Your poem interested us
Somewhat, but we do not consider it
Entirely successful. For one thing,
Your floral diction booms in the right places,
But there are bugs which seem almost deliberately
Placed. Then, again, life blooms everywhere
In your work, yet you cancel it
Later in the lines with a disdain
No artist with a trace of self-respect
Would dare to show (not to mention compassion
For the child of his brain, but let
That pass). Do you have a friend
Who might perhaps be willing to read your work
Before you send it out? Just a suggestion,
But beginners must be guided. Another thing:
Your images, though pleasant taken singly,
Fail to fuse properly. We find a sly
Intent to suggest an overall design,
And yet the reader sees no real organic
Whole. Your metaphors stand isolated;
No poem can carry such disparities
As shooting stars and glory-holes, no matter
How securely yoked. Creation carries
Certain responsibilities, and we
Are unconvinced you have accepted these.
There are other problems, of course,
But our staff is limited, and time is short.
You have, we feel, much to learn, but your talent
Will help.
Cordially,
The Editors
P.S. Since half the battle is knowing
Your market, perhaps you would care to subscribe
_______________
Reprinted with poet's permission
Larry Rubin's Publisher: Bring Back His Books!
- Kendall/Hunt Publishing Homepage
- * * * * *
Larry Rubin's books are out of print!
If you like my review and want to own a copy of his book, contact his publisher and BEG them to reprint his work.
You may be able to snag some used copies on Amazon (see next module).
Larry Rubin's Books
The Writer's Blog
A Space for Student and Other Writing
Every writer deserves a voice.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byNew York Times
The Gray Lady
- Kurds Defy Baghdad, Laying Claim to Land and Oil
- With little notice, Kurdistan's leaders are moving forward on a new constitution, alarming some Ir...
- Democrats Are at Odds on Financing Health Care
- House Democrats planned to propose a tax increase on the wealthy to pay for an overhaul of the healt...
- By Degrees: Buses May Aid Climate Battle in Poor Cities
- The use of low-emission buses could greatly reduce the heat-trapping gases produced in the developin...
- Dance Floors for People With Day Jobs
- An array of early parties, some outdoors, have become a destination for electronica fans.
- To Get to Sotomayor’s Core, Start in New York
- Judge Sonia Sotomayor leaving her Greenwich Village apartment building in May.A daughter of the Bron...
- Dieting Monkeys Offer Hope for Living Longer
- A study of monkeys suggests that people could in principle extend their life span by following a cal...
- Digital Eyes Will Chart Baseball’s Unseen Skills
- Defense and base running, long the realm of arguments with no definitive answer, may soon become qua...
- A.I.G. Seeks U.S. Support for Bonuses
- The embattled insurer has been quietly seeking approval to pay $2.4 million in bonuses to its senior...
The BBC
Two Countries Divided by a Common Language
- G8 summit to tackle food supplies
- Leaders of G8 nations are to unveil a new effort to boost agriculture in the developing world at the...
- Some mosques defy shutdown in Urumqi
- Some mosques in the restive Chinese city of Urumqi open their doors for Friday prayers, despite an o...
- Bull gores man to death in Spain
- A young man, said to be British, is fatally gored at Spain's Pamplona bull run - the first such deat...
- Suu Kyi back on trial after delay
- The trial resumes of Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, after a failed trip by UN chief Ban...
- Two more UK deaths in Afghanistan
- Two more British soldiers are killed in Helmand province in Afghanistan, taking the death toll to ni...
- Rio 'surprise' at bribery claims
- Mining giant Rio Tinto has said it is concerned that four of its employees have been accused by Chin...
- Four charged with US grave scam
- Police charge four people in connection with a scheme to dig up graves at a Chicago cemetery in orde...
- Liberia truth commission gets threats
- Members of Liberia's truth commission receive death threats since recommending President Sirleaf be...
- Herschel shows breadth of vision
- The Herschel space telescopes "first light" images demonstrate a remarkable capability even though...
- Stringy chicken helps scientists find out why cheetahs run so fast
- Scientists attempt to discover what makes cheetahs the fastest land animals on the planet.
Christian Science Monitor
- US troops in Afghanistan face tough battle: Making 'clear, hold, and build' work
- In Wardak Province, the counterinsurgency model has been difficult to implement, though US forces ha...
- A few million US grandmas know what's ahead for Katherine Jackson
- The mother of the King of Pop joins, at least for now, the ranks of grandparents raising grandchildr...
- G-8 leaders pressured to honor aid pledges
- The global recession has helped reduce aid from wealth nations - even as it pushes millions more int...
- Can the National Police provide security in Afghanistan?
- US soldiers have deep concerns about the force, and say that its members collude with insurgents.
- US cracks down on dogfighting. Can pit bulls find a home?
- Wednesday's raid netted 26 arrests and 450 pit bulls across seven states.
CNN Live
- McNair had taped suicide prevention ad
- Former NFL quarterback Steve McNair taped a youth suicide prevention public service announcement bef...
- Portrait of Jackson's pill consumption emerges
- Singer Michael Jackson took more than 10 Xanax pills a night, asking his employees to get the prescr...
- 20-year study: Fewer calories may slow aging
- Cutting daily calorie intake by 30 percent may put the brakes on the aging process, have beneficial...
- Swim club tells minority kids group not to return
- A Philadelphia-area day care center said Thursday that members of a private swim club made racist co...
- Statue of Liberty replica decapitated on YouTube
- A stolen Statue of Liberty replica has resurfaced in a disturbing video posted on YouTube that shows...
- 'Blue Dog' Dems: Health bill not acceptable
- House Democrats' push on health care legislation hit a snag Thursday when a group of fiscally conser...
- NYT removes altered photos from Web site
- All the news that's fit to print -- the motto of The New York Times -- does not necessarily apply to...
- Travolta's wife to address grief over son's death
- Actress Kelly Preston, whose son Jett Travolta died earlier this year, will talk publicly in October...
- Report: One dead from quake in SW China
- China recorded its first death Friday from a moderate earthquake that struck the country's southwest...
- Bodies of seven women found at edge of city ID'd
- New Mexico authorities have identified eight of 11 slain women whose remains were discovered several...
by jennifersemplesiegel
Jennifer Semple Siegel's Are You EVER Going to be Thin? (and other stories) was published in 2004.
Her fiction and non-fiction, including scholar...
(more)
by 2 people |
