Toward Freedom
Godfrey Green

Review by Alyce Wilson

I ride the canals slowly, between
rolling homes, well curtained;
now and then a peek of lace,
a pot of flowers.

These lines from "Amsterdam City" could just as easily describe the collection "Toward Freedom" by Godfrey Green. Slow-moving, rolling, well curtained with flowers.

It is not that the details suffusing his poems are not precise. They simply weigh the poems down. Take, for example, these opening lines from "One Night in the Upper Righthand Corner:"

Orange crescent frames
night street business.
Above mahogany bar hang
gaudy posters, spotlighted;
bottles like fence posts point.
Beneath, the drinkers and watchers
lean on smoked talk.

What of this -- the orange crescent, the mahogany, the gaudy posters, the bottles, the drinkers, the smoke -- is supposed to draw attention? Where is the poem leading?

The next lines continue to be unclear:

My table glows center --
translucent rose and white --
a bowlful thick and smooth;
a plate of heaped leaves,
with waxy red bobs.

Yet more accumulation of details. And then, we finally reach:

That lone man peeps. Does he want in?
His darker color works my mind.
His sips are mournful -- each a sigh.

Here, I would suggest, is where the poem ultimately begins. Here is what, I believe, Green really wanted us to notice. And most significantly, it is where the music begins.

Green has many such transcendental moments. But the one poem where he trusts his instincts enough to skip the preamble is "The Pond," which begins appropriately:

I plunge into the pond.
Skimming over rocks, I'm on the move --
my cumbersome body zooming as a fish.

Here, in the water, the poem is freed:

The sky is my map -- white crescents
rimmed by the sun; points of firs the markers.
I'm an arrow, a bullet, a deer of the water.
My arms reach forever; my legs scissor unbounded.

Green should listen to this voice more often, should free himself from the cumbersome accumulation of detail. He should plunge in, unbounded, toward freedom.

University Editions Inc.; ISBN: 1560028467
Available through Godfrey Green, 63-191 Alderton St., Rego Park, NY 11374.