Island

Charles O. Hartman

From the portrait on its front cover to the notes on its last page, Island composes a love-song to a single, multifarious place. A masterful poet writing in his sixth collection, Hartman harnesses the number pi to find the form for its introductory longpoem; celebrates a Greek island’s denzens, furnishings, and views in a series of concentrated and eccentric glimpses; writes in Greek and translates back to English; and boils the cumulative song down to a rich prose meditation on maps and the body's kinesthesis, wed in the knowledge that makes, however long or briefly, a home.

“If poets are lucky to study everything, Hartman’s wide-ranging and inventive mind is one of the luckiest writing. His poems are our good fortune.”—The Boston Book Review

“Island is a brilliant book, holding equally in the closed curve of its shape the physical and metaphysical—all seen from the fortuitous vantage point of Charles Hartman’s grand intelligence.”—Linda Bierds

Charles O. Hartman’s most recent books of poems are The Long View and Glass Enclosure. He is Professor of English and Poet in Residence at Connecticut College, as well as an essayist and jazz musician.

A sample poem from the book

Dummy

A man with a dummy goes from table to table along the waterfront.

The dummy asks people for money in a querulous, tinny voice.

Some give a little, some a lot. The man is very apologetic,

he sweats in the sun, his jacket is soaked between the shoulderblades.

With the hand not holding the dummy he wipes his bald forehead

constantly with a plaid handkerchief. People look at him blankly

as they hand the dummy its money. The dummy wears a tuxedo

and a beanie. Fiddlers and accordionists

and the hawkers of combs and mums and lighters fall

silent and draw back when the dummy comes demanding.

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Ticket

I love the moment at the ticket window—he says—

when you are to say the name of your destination, and realize

that you could say anything, the man at the counter

will believe you, the woman at the counter

would never say No, that isn’t where you're going,

you could buy a ticket for one place and go to another,

less far along the same line. Suddenly you would find yourself

—he says—in a locality you’ve never seen before,

where no one has ever seen you and you could say your name

was anything you like, nobody would say No,

that isn’t you, this is who you are. It thrills me every time.

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