A Daily Glance
Jesse Glass' The Passion of Phineas Gage & Selected Poems shows the range of Glass' work, from Vispo to the long poem. The Passion of Phineas Gage, the poem, is told through diverse voices. It details Gage's personality shift after he was injured with the steel rod. We hear from a doctor, his wife, and from Gage himself. The Gage pieces are the most interesting to me because they try to chronicle a brain that's fragmented. As a selected, the rest of the book contains many individual pieces of note, some of note for reading Western classics in China and Japan. The poem "Lecturing on Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson in China" was one of the first I read in the book, and it remains a favorite after reading through the collection. Overall, the book shows Glass as a poet interesting in exploring the full range of language.
Comments