Westward -

Amy Clampitt

Alfred A. Knopf

1990

105 páginas

3h 30m

ISBN-13: 9780679728672

"Nothing stays put," writes Clampitt in a poem from her fourth collection: "All that we know, that we're/ made of, is motion." It is against this motion, particularly the westward movement that seems to drive the fates of both humans and wildlife, that the poet holds her "frail wick of Metaphor." But given Clampitt's well-established reputation for opulent language and rich, almost heady, description, the claim to frailty is disingenuous indeed. Though many poems rely on the now-familiar wildflower litanies that typify much current poetry, Clampitt's interest in transplants ("what had been alien begins/ as it alters, to grow as though it were indigenous") adds an extra dimension to a book that grows gradually stranger as the reader's imagination travels through it.