Laughter Before Sleep

Laughter Before Sleep

by Robert Pack
Laughter Before Sleep

Laughter Before Sleep

by Robert Pack

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Overview

One of America’s most eminent nature poets, Robert Pack has won the acclaim of writers, critics, and readers from Stephen Jay Gould to Mark Strand. In his latest collection, Laughter Before Sleep, Pack carries on his themes of family and friends, responsibility to the natural world of evolved diversity, the transience of life, the fragility of happiness, and the consolations offered by art and music.

Laughter Before Sleep weighs the nature of endings from the perspective of old age and embraces the humor and play of memory that keep mortality at bay.As we are carried along with Pack’s lyrical, sensitive, and intelligent verse, he takes us on a moving but often comic journey toward the end of life. In the opening section, Pack composes poems that meditate upon a sense of his own diminishing and the meaning of absences. The middle sections form episodes of a memoir in verse, moving from family to history and back again, reflecting on the power of anecdote to shape a life in retrospect. With the final section, Pack recalls his unfulfilled plan to raise penguins in Montana, offers a panegyric on Darwin’s nose, and makes the mistake of trying to impress a police officer with a book of poems.   Filled with charm and wit but also with philosophical melancholy, Laughter Before Sleep is a superb addition to the poet’s oeuvre.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780226644202
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 09/05/2011
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 160
File size: 205 KB

About the Author

Robert Pack is the Abernethy Professor of Literature and Creative Writing Emeritus at Middlebury College, where he taught for thirty-four years and directed the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He lives in Missoula and teaches at the Honors College of the University of Montana. He is author of eighteen books of poems, most recently of Elk in Winter and Still Here, Still Now, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Read an Excerpt

Laughter Before Sleep


By Robert Pack

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Copyright © 2011 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-226-64419-6


Chapter One

    Late Mountain Spring

      Mid-May, and still the maples
    bear no leaves; only red buds
    offer me reassurance that, as always,
    leaves, abundant leaves, though late,
    will finally emerge, providing shade
    as needed respite
    from the enervating summer sun.

      Birches display only the catkins
    that precede their flourishing,
    but soon, I know, leaves will appear;
    I must not take the lateness
    of spring's blossoming to mean
    more than a random weather variant
    of nature as it's always been,
    more than a meaningless delay
    of consolation for bleak winter rain.

      Yet lately nothing looks
    benign to me as once natural change
    appeared acceptable;
    familiar sights now seem askew:
    a break in the uplifted hawk's smooth flight,
    dazed looks in grazing mild-eyed deer
    as if they suddenly have something urgent
    they would ask me to explain.

      But no, such unassigned anxiety,
    such morbid reading of the scene, surely
    is much too personal—this spreading fear
    that clings to everything within my view;
    except for us, nature is not
    more cruel than it's always been.
    Am I projecting my late gloom
    on some catastrophe
    I apprehend as unpreventable?

      This sense of lateness won't allow
    relief from thought—the gripping sense
    that human time is coming to an end,
    that, as predicted from the start,
    from Noah on to the Apocalypse, because
    of what we are—the rabid hatreds
    separating us—our kind is now
    about to bring unnatural destruction
    on ourselves eons before the fated sun
    collapses and explodes.

      I look into the leafless air as if
    its blankness were a prophecy,
    and I can see the late Bob Pack
    bearing our species' natural remorse
    in desperate behalf of everyone he loves,
    ascending toward another galaxy
    whose aged inhabitants reach out
    across light years to welcome,
    to embrace, to comfort him.


      Alive

      I watch smooth aspen leaves
    flash green, flutter to silver,
    and return to luminescent green
    in the slight uplift of
    a wavering September breeze;
    and I can see—I live, I am aware—
    the red-tailed hawk circle and swoop
    and rise again and dip and dive—
    because, alive, he can delight
    in what he is designed to do,
    as I delight in watching him.

      This is his living moment
    in which my life also is contained;
    this is the moment I contain my life
    as if I were the willing author
    of my own design, as if the hawk's
    stark silhouette against smooth sky
    were my original idea.

      His circle widens as he swings
    out from the scene and vanishes
    behind a swirling cloud
    then swiftly reappears, and I am whirled
    in an astounding vertigo
    of my ascending self—
    the opposite of when my body
    longs for the release of sleep
    or clenches grim with grief
    for a beloved friend whom I counted on
    and who will not return—as if
    my groping flesh encompassed only
    urges and dependencies.

      Despite my feverish regrets,
    despite work still left incomplete,
    I'll concentrate on how
    reverberating autumn light
    proliferates itself
    upon reflecting aspen leaves—
    the aspen whispering its name—
    on how a jolt of wind joins in as if
    it knew the satisfaction of intent.

      And now my earth-bound life
    composes everything within
    the widened circle of my sight—
    I swoop, I rise, I dip, I dive;
    now I am pure awareness that I am
    aware; I live composed now in lush
    exultation that I am alive!


    Now Once Again

    Now once again the glaring moon,
    A mirror in the midnight sky,
    A single flower in an empty field,
    Evokes the expectation that
    An ancient truth will be revealed.

    Who knows from where such expectations come,
    Some source deluded or inspired,
    Ancestral intimations that the moon
    Conveys the permanence we know as change,
    That what we love must vanish soon.

    Thus sorrow for each pulsing thing
    That crawls or creeps, slithers or strides,
    Is given in this passing night to know
    From the dark depth of need, or maybe fear;
    Sorrow abides because I think it so.

    So this is what the moon proclaims
    As it has always done, and always will
    For those who watch it at the full,
    Who hold it in their sight, and, like our blood,
    Feel tidal power in its pull.


    Wondering

    I wonder if I really have free will,
    And wonder if I choose my wonderings.
    Is wondering like hiking up a hill
    With breathlessness so quickened that it brings

    The consciousness of breathing into mind
    Thus making possible the willed control
    Of how I measure out my breath to find
    What body offers up for thought, what role

    Intention plays in harmonizing who
    I can contrive my remade self to be
    With undefined desire? I think of you,
    Imagining you're thinking now of me

    Picturing you reposed beneath a cloud
    So low and lushly luminous it frames
    Both you and the bright hill that sings aloud
    With swallows swooping their melodic names

    Above the shimmer of tall swaying trees.
    As in a dream a swirling brook appears
    That breaks the silence of the hill to ease
    My need for choosing and relieve my fears

    Of unnamed innermost dark emptiness—
    If wondering and choosing are not free.
    Where no self was, let there be ringing yes,
    As I choose you, and you have chosen me.


    Clouds

    A dense gray cloud above the mountain peak
    Collides with one that's lighter gray;
    A surge of wind blows those charged clouds away
    So moonlight glistens on the bleak

    Expanse of smooth undifferentiated snow
    Above the tree line in the thinned-out air;
    Palpable absence hovers there
    Where even hungry cougars do not go.

    The scene reflects my swirling mind
    Contriving still to shape, to see
    My inner emptiness, the ghost of me
    Expressed, made visible. And so I find

    White absence is embellished by
    The thought that mirrored thought
    Reveals my life as clashed clouds caught
    In an upsweep of wind. And that is why

    I'll let all introspection go—
    My April hopes, my August memories—
    To watch blank space define the trees,
    And moonlight merge with spectral snow.


    Warm Air

    Mild summer seems not ready to move on;
    September, with ripe apples in her arms,
    Remembers and remains, and so warm air
    Distracts with its voluptuous charms

    From the dull sense of my diminishing,
    The dwindling light that shades this scene,
    Where mornings gone are visible
    And mean what absences must mean.

    It's wavering October as I write,
    Though maybe I won't find a final rhyme
    Before November snow obscures the ground
    And whiteness fades into uncaring time.

    And yet I see September still—rose apples
    Covering her breasts, her private place,
    As evening's undulating air reveals
    Chilled stillness in her changing face.


    Only the Evergreen
      for Dan Spencer

      The only evergreen not always green,
    With null November coming on,
    The tamarack lets go its needles as I see
    October flourish to its sullen end,
    As if one season can encompass both
    Mortality and immortality
    In its unfolding golden blend.

      Green needles brighten
    In their languid mellowing:
    Yellow turns gold, gold shades to bronze,
    Repeated in the rippling lake,
    So slowly over dwindling sunlit days
    That I can comprehend transfigured trees
    Are destined and designed
    To go their modulating ways
    To barrenness—and thus their going is
    Contained within my mind.

      The beauty of these evergreens
    In their effulgent letting go,
    Preparing for new beauty coming on—
    The silence of bare branches
    Underneath the silence of submerging snow—
    Is such that I can almost let myself forget
    How silence deepens to oblivion
    Devoid of yellow, gold, or bronze,
    Until all going finally is gone.


    Late Light

      Late orange light reflected from the lake
    Leaps up into the mountain's shade,
    And suddenly a crouching wind
    Claws at pale, trembling aspen leaves;
    A startled elk, foamed water dripping
    From his lips, retreats back from the shore,
    His wary head held stiffly high
    As in an earlier imagining.

      Perhaps this scene may be composed
    Of some sharp sliver of a memory
    As if I once lived by a lake; maybe a dream
    Of languid autumn water darkening,
    Of loons lamenting my heart's own lament—
    For what? for whom? I can't recall
    The real cause of my gloom or what
    I thought the startled elk's eyes meant.

      Dissolved in forest shade, the elk
    Huddles among hushed fallen leaves, and I
    Can see his lurking absence everywhere
    My glum mind seeks to look,
    And I can listen to the aftermath
    Of moaning loon calls intermingling
    All across the undulating lake
    Along the sprung wind's swirling path.

      And I myself also have vanished
    From the rippling shade of aspen leaves,
    Except as whirling consciousness,
    Like lilting loon calls echoing
    Over lake water when the loons depart,
    And wind returns to linger just as wind,
    And looming mountain peaks merge with blank sky,
    And silence settles in my silent heart.


    Bird Feeder

    The nuthatch and the chickadee
    Are not just navigating through;
    They know that they can count on me
    To keep their feeder filled with food
    In swirling snow and stifling heat,
    The nuthatch and the chickadee.

    Their fluttering expresses me
    From twig to twig to feeder perch;
    In merriment the chickadee,
    The nuthatch upside-down in search
    Of sunflower seeds beneath the tree,
    Their fluttering expresses me.

    The nuthatch and the chickadee
    Are minimal survivors who
    Still animate my memory;
    They are the shimmer in the dew,
    The gleam within the shade I see,
    The nuthatch and the chickadee.

(Continues...)



Excerpted from Laughter Before Sleep by Robert Pack Copyright © 2011 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

I Seasons

Late Mountain Spring
Alive
Now Once Again
Wondering
Clouds
Warm Air
Only the Evergreen
Late Light
Bird Feeder
Helpless
Cheerleaders
Among the Constellations
Indian Summer
Seasons
November

II Cherishing

Grandpa
Kosher Bacon for Aunt Pearl
Hands
Power
Woodpecker Reprise
Woolly Mammoth
Socrates’s Last Words
Washington
The Covenant of Sigmund Freud
Only One
Cherishing
Encounter
Loon Call Cantata
Naming Mountain Wildflowers
Bubbie

III Lamenting

Melancholy
Pain
Evacuation
Humankind
Inheritance
Blindness
Junerose
Obsolete
Tehran
Enemy
Transfigured
Falling and Rising
At Number Seven
Stories
Sonnetelle of the Dark

IV Laughter

Showing Off in Blue
A Toast
Parenting Penguins
Skunk Family
Accident in Red
Anticipating Paradise
Tickling
Worms
Jasper
Panegyric for Charles Darwin’s Nose
Worrying
Exchanging Names
An Elephant by Aristotle
Identity
Glockenspiel3

V Epilogue

Genie
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