Plato's Ladder

by Stephen Romer

Idols established Stephen Romer as a poet of tempering wit, philosophical eloquence, and emotional candour. This long-awaited second volume develops many of the same themes, but the scope is considerably broadened. `Plato's Ladder' is an emblem of aspiration, and many of the poems explore that theme, or compulsion, as it is experienced in art, but also in the less serene histories of personal relationships. The recurrent shocks and consolations of time and memory are continually recorded in an attempt to make sense of them. The poet's approach and location vary from the boldly direct to the ironic retrospect.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 21, 1993

Reviews

[Tristan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought that Plato's Ladder was filed with generally good but not stellar poems. They were a little too interior and direct for my taste, each piece straightforwardly "about" some aspect of real experience even when I'm not entirely sure just what-- like "Work" which includes,

When shall we ever begin?
Swept mercilessly clean

there's a billion billion stars
in the skylight, and our chairs

make their strict companionable arc
with the fire. We're ready for work,

it's the moment we've been waiting for.
After a day of trial and error,

triumph and tantrum,
our baby's down and milky calm.

See what I mean? Pretty much all of the poems feel like this, with varying degrees of obviousness regarding exactly what the topic is. (I'd probably place "Work" around the middle--easy to see but it doesn't hit you over the head with it) Their execution is really very good, smooth and readable with some clever and intriguing turns of phrase giving sparkle to each poem. This sort of domesticity polished to a mirror-hard philosophical reflectiveness just isn't my cup of tea. I did really like "Maltese Fireworks" which opens, "Every field a crop of stone / every post a birdtrap" and ends

Our Lady of Gunpowder
blooms on the horizon,

a brief red oval
in a circlet of stars.

"On the Shiants," and "The Weight of It" ("You come out into the floating garden / of early October, there's a mist on your cheek / and you say it's autumn, what have I done"). When we get down to it, I think this is a classic case of "it's not the book, it's me", a collection of perfectly fine, possibly even great, poems that just were not what I want to read.