The Beautiful Losses

<p>Can we separate our personal experiences from the world we live in?</p><p> </p><p>Fred Pollack has wrestled with this question. In his work individuals exist firmly in the context of their historical moment. <span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The self and its depths don't </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>orbit</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> reality but </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>reflect</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> it and it reflects them; the task of imagination is to capture that shared light.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p>This book will take you on many journeys. Pollack writes about people and societies across time and space. You will meet characters both real and fantastical in the present past and future. They are always navigating relationships some loving some inspiring; often with forces that have or claim to have power over them. </p><p> </p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The subject-matter of </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The Beautiful Losses</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> ranges from the hopes of an eight-year-old scientist (And So You Shall) to Biden's infrastructure plan (Infrastructure). There are fantasies set in the poet's DC neighborhood (Events of Today) in the Middle Ages (The Bells) and among alien civilizations (Entanglement). Pollack imagines the imaginative lives of others (Friends) sometimes their real lives (Darlin' you just sorta); often as in the title poem a near or distant future. </span></p><p> </p><p>According to Pollack A strong poem is about something that is important but which is not perceived by the ideologies of its time or expressible in their language.</p><p> </p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Most of these poems combine lyric and narrative elements. They read like stories.  Pollack says his secret ambition is - without sacrificing compression symbolism or subtlety - to reclaim territory that poetry ceded long ago to the novel.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p>In his introduction to an early book-length poem of Pollack's Mark Jarman wrote: (Pollack) shows us <span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>the life both real and ideal of our era the gods we worship our customs and traditions our folkways and social norms our dreams and nightmares all in a voice and rhythm that are as much of our time as Homer's were of his. </span></p>