Pobo’s poems celebrate the gentle beauty, the awesome power and the ultimate triumph of herbs and flowers over man-made technology. His vision includes the knowledge of those cyclical processes which happen beneath the surface in soil’s dark secrecy or beyond the planet’s atmosphere. Even the ice of winter can never kill the hope of summer’s delicious fragrances and exuberant colors; nor can the brown brittleness of dying stalks in autumn delete the memory of spring’s green thrust. The poetic voice withdraws into "the captivity of (the) garden," knowing full well that the believers in unlimited technological progress will never "crack the codes of plants" nor "send the Grand Canyon’s sunset through the scanner."

—Hartmut Lutz, Chair, Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik,
   University of Greisfswald, Germany

On reading Kenneth Pobo’s new book, Ordering: A Season in my Garden, I was reminded of Wayne Dodd’s essay/chapter What We Write About When We Write About Poetry from Dodd’s book, Toward The End of the Century. Dodd gives us an insightful view of how poets perceive the sensuality of life in all of its minute details. It begins with the "need to remain open to discovery, to largeness; the need to give over our desire to define, to interpret, to reduce, to translate. We need to remind ourselves, in short, that in a poem we find the world happening not as concept but as percept. It is the world happening. The world becoming. The world allowed to be—itself."

Dodd is obviously an incurable Romantic—and so am I when it comes to that old distinction between rational explanation and poetic expression. The former limits our experiences to analytical definitions. The latter is an entirely different kind of ordering of impressions. Poetic expression does not seek to define, as Dodd put it—rather it seeks the being of things.

I know that Ken Pobo loves to work in his garden. And what he sees from the growth of these delicate spirits is not the symbolic value of dogwoods, daffodils, redbuds, rhododendrons…not representations of something else; he allows his attention to open to their being, to their existence and in so doing—they cannot be defined. Robert Hass has said that the poet praises life even when we must confront the depths of hell. It is all instruction. A "reaching out—in order to see more, to hold more: to be more. And that is what we are interested in: not in final truths, not in absolutes about relative matters."

DOGWOOD AND REDBUD

Why not celebrate
spin of stamen-
a cabin with lights
shining between lid
and lash? Spring.
The dogwood
white and pink
as our most fragile
secret. Redbud,
slanted against
the mountain, spilling
from stone, asking us
into the future we share
with any rooted thing.
Our commercial hearts
reduced at Discount City
Flea Market - hidden
in a blossom net.
Trap me, quickly!
Don't let me out
till the last bloom
browns. By then
I will have become bark,
ark on the unseen
stream under your ankles.

Dodd calls the poetic perception a "shared physical/spiritual experience." Theodore Roethke, the master of observation, said that "a poem is a holy thing—a good poem, that is." From this angle, Pobo’s garden is his temple. Dodd says it best: "To be alive to language’s mysterious participation in…the music of being."

CLEMATIS

The three clematis,
out at last! All
are magenta
against my gate.
How long they stayed
tight in swelling buds,
preparing for their debut-
in full bloom,
the sun’s yellow lips
kiss them over and
over, the moon’s mist
hands touch them
when we sleep.

This is an example of seizing the moment—as if this little poem were itself an observation that passed very quickly. And yet, it is moments of seeing something happen, something intensely alive, which make our ordinary habits dull by comparison. It is the suddenness of such vivid moments that fulfill us.

Pobo, at times, suggests, in this garden-temple, that man has forgotten what it is to be natural, simple, at-one with the elements of nature. Yes, this too, is an ancient universal theme, but in a time when our society is facing the threat of Global Warming, at a time when hatred and prejudices are on the rise, the message continues to fall on mute ears. I’m reminded of the words of Jesus, "Look to the lilies of the field…" We have forgotten what it is to simply be.

SOME FIERCE BEGONIAS

The phone rings as I’m putting
on my running clothes.
Miss Terri, our secretary, asks
if she should pick up my plane
tickets in the business office.
Yes, I say if it’s not too much
trouble. The day goes on that way,
they all do, unless a sick cat
undoes me or I read a KKK
candidate is heading for the
statehouse-and then where?
I think of you and how you’re
chicory in my coffee
even though you live in Florida.
I want one bed to stretch
1000 miles, step outside and see
some fierce begonias.
Late October. Waxy pink petals
test a cold thermometer.
They don’t give in. I run
and run and run, my body
a stem straining with buds.

I’ll close with the following praise of this book by Charles Rammelkamp:

"In its deceptive simplicity of language and tone—its implicit serenity—Ken Pobo’s poetry bears a family resemblance to Oriental nature poetry. Like the best haiku, too, his poems are full of a passive wisdom and a wonder about the world, floating on deep philosophical waters. The poems in Ordering: A Season in my Garden are a delight to read for the peace they evince, the facility with language they demonstrate."

—Jacqueline Marcus
Editor of ForPoetry.com

More Poems from Ordering: A Season in my Garden

QUIVER OF ROSE

I'm not sure how
many studies have been done, how
many polls taken, how
many surveys sent, but I doubt
most lovers discuss April
Stevens and Nino Tempo's
Atco 45s
after sex, doubt
most prefer Popsicles to red
delicious apples, and I doubt
most lovers watch Dobie Gillis
in the tender twilight though your spiritual resemblance
to Zelda Gilroy and mine to
Maynard G. Krebs scares me, and
if the so-
ciologist,
pollster, or
survey taker
comes to the door
I will tell the sociologist,
pollster or survey taker
they can't send the Grand
Canyon's sunset through
a scanner, can't pull orchids
from a #2 pencil, and can't
tabulate the quiver
of rose petals in light rain.

SEPTEMBER BOUGAINVILLEA

September is
falling leaves of notebook
paper while violet
bougainvillea moons
rise over roofs
of petunias and asters,
moons that only the first
frost can make set.

Click here to read Ken Pobo's essay, Poets among the Stones.
Click here and here to read more of Ken Pobo's poetry in ForPoetry.com.

ForPoetry