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The Double Truth
The Double Truth is a collection of poems that arc from myth to history, knowledge to mystery, Eros to natural love, animals to human beings, then back in an alternating poetic current that betrays a speaker who is at once a privileged witness of her time and a diachronic amalgam of voices that are as imagined as they are real in their anonymous legacy.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 28, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 14, 2012
The Double Truth (2011) is Chard DeNiord’s fourth book of poetry, following Asleep in the Fire (1990), Sharp Golden Thorn(2003), and Night Mowing (2005). In this most recent collection, he once again exhibits his acute, probing intellect and unique sensitivity. Regardless of the subject matter or backdrop (rural New England, the question of the Divine, human relationships, historical frames; in The Double Truth they are many, all bound by a smart and startling central conceit), from each sooner or later evolves a question to which there is no easy (nor singular) answer.
There is an analogy on scientific truth presented by Stephen Hawking in The Grand Design: Imagine a fish in a round fishbowl. Figures who walk outside the bowl would appear to that fish to be traveling along a curved line. Since the fish knows nothing else, and could conceivably work out scientific laws that would be testable and consistent within that rounded framework, those laws would be as much the “truth” as our own. And, Hawking adds, how do we know our vision of the world is not likewise distorted through a massive lens? In other words, if truth is what is observed and can be used to both accurately describe present and predict future phenomena, it is entirely possible for there to be more than one “truth,” given the right context.
One can see that curved fishbowl arc traveling concurrently with the “real,” linear line throughout DeNiord’s book: Applying Occam and his razor to Thomas Aquinas, exploring the relationship between death and beauty, or a speaker chastising himself for presuming to know more than a spider, we are confronted time and again by multiple truths. As an example: in “At the Socratic Sugar House,” we have two speakers comparing their views of the steam rising from boiling sap: “You look at the steam and see / a ghost. I look at the steam / and see my grief. We're close / enough in that I guess / so let's leave it there.”
In “The Storm Cloud,” we have: “Now that I have imagined myself / from above, I see my tasks as blessings / in the ruse of motions, as if the world / were invisible to the dead and I were / merely dancing for them on an empty / stage from a great, great distance / that is also near, adjusting my glasses, / folding a towel, looking up.” Herein, perhaps, we best see the Double Truth at work: A man engaged in imagination and yet engaged in self-reflection; a man performing tedious, joyless chores yet performing for the dead; the invisibility of the world of the living to the dead, the invisibility of the dead to the world of the living; a stage both near and far; a man both looking up and imagining himself from above. When confronted with these pluralities, the chores themselves are transformed, no longer simply joyless; to borrow terminology from Kundera, these light phenomena are imbued with an incredible amount of weight.
In The Double Truth, virtually every line—like each action, thought, question or event it presents—is infused with multiple meanings; a subtle shift in perspective (the placing of oneself into a fishbowl, say) might reveal an alternate and equally viable truth. DeNiord, in this splendid book, has hit upon and explored a fundamental aspect of the human experience. To paraphrase Whitman, we are large, we contain multitudes.
There is an analogy on scientific truth presented by Stephen Hawking in The Grand Design: Imagine a fish in a round fishbowl. Figures who walk outside the bowl would appear to that fish to be traveling along a curved line. Since the fish knows nothing else, and could conceivably work out scientific laws that would be testable and consistent within that rounded framework, those laws would be as much the “truth” as our own. And, Hawking adds, how do we know our vision of the world is not likewise distorted through a massive lens? In other words, if truth is what is observed and can be used to both accurately describe present and predict future phenomena, it is entirely possible for there to be more than one “truth,” given the right context.
One can see that curved fishbowl arc traveling concurrently with the “real,” linear line throughout DeNiord’s book: Applying Occam and his razor to Thomas Aquinas, exploring the relationship between death and beauty, or a speaker chastising himself for presuming to know more than a spider, we are confronted time and again by multiple truths. As an example: in “At the Socratic Sugar House,” we have two speakers comparing their views of the steam rising from boiling sap: “You look at the steam and see / a ghost. I look at the steam / and see my grief. We're close / enough in that I guess / so let's leave it there.”
In “The Storm Cloud,” we have: “Now that I have imagined myself / from above, I see my tasks as blessings / in the ruse of motions, as if the world / were invisible to the dead and I were / merely dancing for them on an empty / stage from a great, great distance / that is also near, adjusting my glasses, / folding a towel, looking up.” Herein, perhaps, we best see the Double Truth at work: A man engaged in imagination and yet engaged in self-reflection; a man performing tedious, joyless chores yet performing for the dead; the invisibility of the world of the living to the dead, the invisibility of the dead to the world of the living; a stage both near and far; a man both looking up and imagining himself from above. When confronted with these pluralities, the chores themselves are transformed, no longer simply joyless; to borrow terminology from Kundera, these light phenomena are imbued with an incredible amount of weight.
In The Double Truth, virtually every line—like each action, thought, question or event it presents—is infused with multiple meanings; a subtle shift in perspective (the placing of oneself into a fishbowl, say) might reveal an alternate and equally viable truth. DeNiord, in this splendid book, has hit upon and explored a fundamental aspect of the human experience. To paraphrase Whitman, we are large, we contain multitudes.
March 6, 2012
There's no doubt that deNiord is a poet and educator who has contributed a great deal to the pedagogy of creative writing and there's no doubt he's an adept poet and writer, however I found this volume very much lacking. In some ways, I feel it was a case of deNiord's views, foci, and even age just being too far away from my own interests in poetry, but I also felt he simply comes off here as trying too hard to be an elder statesman of letters who can still write Dylan-esque verse at the drop of a hat. There are poets of his era (and those also of his stature) still writing and writing so very well—Jorie Graham certainly comes to mind but also even younger poets with old souls like G.C. Waldrep—who focus on their subjects and put the personal second to that, or in some cases, focus on themselves as the subject yet do so without the tropes deNiord dwells on in this book. There are some good moments here and there but too much of the time deNiord is either being Captain Obvious or is simply trying too hard.
Yet, the good moments, they are quick, subtle, views of what might have been if the book was a less obviously introspective effort and one with more sleek, sublime, poems such as deNiord's masterful "Puritan in Flight". This poem reminds us of the poet's ample talents yet many others rattle on without the sure-footing or since of mystery and history in this little spot of a poem.
In all, I felt out of touch with the poet and often bored with his book. Perhaps I'm just not the right reader for it, and that's fine. He has his fans and they're fully entitled to be elated if they want to be, but for me, it wasn't an impressive volume.
Yet, the good moments, they are quick, subtle, views of what might have been if the book was a less obviously introspective effort and one with more sleek, sublime, poems such as deNiord's masterful "Puritan in Flight". This poem reminds us of the poet's ample talents yet many others rattle on without the sure-footing or since of mystery and history in this little spot of a poem.
In all, I felt out of touch with the poet and often bored with his book. Perhaps I'm just not the right reader for it, and that's fine. He has his fans and they're fully entitled to be elated if they want to be, but for me, it wasn't an impressive volume.
May 8, 2012
A couple good ones.
The rest are pretty "okay".
The rest are pretty "okay".
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews