Reasons for Going It on Foot

by William Pitt Root

Book by Root, William Pitt

Genres: Poetry

86 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1981

Reviews

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though William Pitt Root's name seems vaguely familiar to me, I'm sure I've never read a book of his poetry because I wouldn't have forgotten it. This book is early to mid-career for him (1981) and it has some luminous poems in it. Though it seems a bit unfair to categorize poets, his affinity for the natural world and its opportunities for ecstatic experience shines brightly throughout this volume. Not only does he fall into the "nature poet" category by virtue of the imagery of poems here, he also dons that cap by addressing three poets (in three different poems) also strongly associated with nature: Robinson Jeffers, Gary Snyder, and Wendell Berry. There are also two of three ekphrastic poems in this volume, so there is a lot of conversation with other artists.

But his main focus is the interplay of elements, especially that of light. Here is one that features water:

Ways Water Has

It always moves and pleases me,
these ways the ocean has with walls of adamant--urgent and lavish,
restless as the moon, persistent as darkness;
even the lesser wave as it meets stone
breaks into brilliance
and that fluent whisper riotous in the graceful rush of foam.

And look,
see how these reefs admit and shed what washes over them,
resisting and absorbing, in one stance, the myriad approaches of the sea,
and how carelessly the simple water fondles, shocks
and undermines the fundamental granite
touch by touch.

That the innocent reduction of the upright cliff
to puffs and swirls of dust
the wingbeat of the least seabird can scatter!

May I know a woman who has known the sea


Even this next poem, "Sometimes Heaven is a Mean Machine," turns a motorcycle elemental:

It is like riding Death and not dying.

It shudders, snarls and roars like an iron lion.
It shines like the chromed bones of a bull.

At night it's single headlight
rakes across the highway like the lowered horn of a charging unicorn.

It looks like Death waiting for a taker.

You take it, you ride.

All day, all night for years
while the bright arcs of your breath flex
into curves repeating earthshapes
you ride, the road informing you.

You ride
your own death and you do not die.

It shines and you ride its shining.


I found much to enjoy in this volume, in image, language, and meaning. The most unfortunate thing about this book of poetry is that mildew has set in on it (horrible used book hazard here in the southeast), so I'm not going to keep it. I'll be watching for more books by this poet though.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 R783r 1981