A Passable Man
Description
Ralph Culver's is a poetry of great precision, almost delicacy, and of subtle power, deployed in poems that dwell in the ordinary and bring with them a sense of the extraordinary...; what lives between his lines is the shadow that haunts us all. In A Passable Man, he interrogates a life in five parts: "I could not keep from turning / to check, mid-step, / the footprints strung behind / in the climbing snow" (from "Prelude"). This is a life shadowed by loss and regret, moved by "the common fear, the common love/ he fell out of, now into ..." (from "Boy at the Plate"). The man in these pages is "passable," in the sense of being human: flawed, and full of care. The book? It earns my highest marks. -Joan Aleshire
Culver's lyrical narratives in A Passable Man unfold elegantly, brilliantly.... He] pierces his subjects-"the last catamount," misunderstanding, bargainers, camping alone-with self-delighting insights...: "The sounds of water as she rises from her bath / while I slice bread in the kitchen: / How can I still feel sorry for myself?" ... Culver resolves his reveries with universal conclusions. "If we open ourselves to quintessence rather than particulars," he writes in "Resolute," "we gain in clarity, the way a bee does not recall a flower / but does its purposeful gavotte to point the way / to an abundance." -Chard deNiord
What to say in short compass of a book so rangy and compelling as A Passable Man? The collection raises so many themes and issues that brief commentary feels futile. At one point, Ralph Culver writes that
Grace,
despite our meddling,
holds doubt in check.
May everything be true,
and truth direct.
His truths, brilliantly revealed, are direct, to be sure, and often stark; but the poet also witnesses to the grace that has favored him with uncommon insight and all but matchless powers of speech. -Sydney Lea
Praise for A Passable Man
"Ralph Culver's first full-length collection, A Passable Man (MadHat Press), gives the feel of a fire outside at night — something warm and smoldering in the cold, something flaming, and temporary in its burn. We are alive right now, these poems seem to say, and that will not always be the case. Culver...aims his attention on the push-pull of the fiery present, its quotidian joys and pains: a woodpecker at the suet, new ice skates on fresh ice, mending with thread, and the losses present and long gone that haunt in their various spoken and unspoken ways. 'We gather/ in the space of our flesh/ to witness/ what never can happen again,/ not ever,' he writes. ... These are physical poems, attuned to natural rhythms and those rhythms' effects on spirit and body both. 'The fire cannot feed without eating its home ... the wave craves the loss of itself.' Quiet wisdom, which is the best kind of wisdom, lives in his lines." — Nina MacLaughlin, The Boston Globe
"A volume of poems that explore life's subtle connections. Divided into five parts, Culver's collection presents a quiet symphony of imagery. ... His poetry is satisfyingly elemental; natural forces blend with the movement of one's mind, as in 'Prelude,' when winter 'stops/ the brain's fragile traffic,' or when the end of the day comes in 'How It Happens Sometimes' like 'an animal that wants / your blood, that wants / to wear your skin / like a summer dress.' ... A sensual earthiness permeates many poems, and Culver is confident as he expresses his ideas economically without losing their potency...readers will feel the power of the poet's succinct use of image and metaphor. A powerful collection of contemporary poetry that's both carnal and full of regret." — Kirkus Reviews