No Messages

<i>No Messages</i> the 2001 winner of the Ernest Sandeen Prize is Robert Hahn's second major collection of poetry. In commenting on Hahn's first collection <i>All Clear</i> Richard Howard called attention to Hahn's ability to ground his perceptions his discoveries in a specific circumstance . . . to reach the risen condition the state beyond which is the purpose of all his poems. Howard's analysis anticipates the poems of <i>No Messages</i. which focus on particular places and characters while they progress through motions of the mind and maneuvers of language toward a 'state beyond ' which involves a reformulating or a re-seeing -- reconfigurations of an apprehended world through language and form. In its exploration of the seams and the seamlessness of language and reality <i>No Messages</i> is an apt introduction to the new millennium. The no messages of the title reflects a basic tension in contemporary poetry between its claim to exist in the realms of language and structure and its sense of responsibility to render the world in its actuality in a clarified or confronted state. A striking balance of this tension is found in the collection's central section a suite of poems responding to the influence of James Merrill. While <i>No Messages</i> is devoted to re-visionings of the world in language it remains grounded in circumstance and place and in the actions and convictions of historical figures. The book opens with John Knox on the beach at St. Andrews in Scotland and closes with John Brown on the bank of the Pottowatamie River in Kansas. Between these two shores <i>No Messages</i> describes a series of luminous arcs connecting this world and the world beyond.