Poets Hunting, Wormster pen new books

You won’t find two poets more different from one another than Baron Wormser and Constance Hunting. Wormser is rock ‘n’ roll. Hunting is opera. That’s one way to look at it. But neither is an opening act. They are both feature presentations, and they both have rhythm and beat and bite.

In two new books of poetry — Wormser’s “Mulroney and Others” (Sarabande Books) and Hunting’s “Natural Things” (National Poetry Foundation) — these substantial Maine poets carve places for themselves in the zaftig Maine literary scene.

Or, in Hunting’s case, recarve. “Natural Things” is a collection of her works dating from 1969 and extending through 1998, when Hunting’s last book of poetry, “The Shape of Memory,” was published. A professor of creative writing at the University of Maine, Hunting has tenaciously shaped and heightened the sensibilities of a generation of writers. Her own writing gives testimony to the origins of that voice, which is so meticulous and sensate that it sometimes feels Greek, sometimes English, and always deeply American.

While Hunting’s style has shape-shifted through the years between elegant brevity and epic narration, her imagery has returned again and again to pastoral forms. The birds, insects, flowers and trees that make up her landscapes have Victorian beauty. Her narrative eye sweeps across scenery with such grace and scope that you’re drawn into a world that is at once ordinary and ethereal.

But don’t be misled by the prettiness of Hunting’s prose. Her characters are not courtly and prissy. They are pensive, inwardly engaged and busy with the work of perception, gumption, fury and revelation.

In a verse from “Between the Worlds,” the title of one of Hunting’s signature novella poems as well as a 1988 collection of her work, the poet describes the prickliness of separation in terms that are raw and aching:

I could have told you of the heart.

How at first it swells, bruised, dis-eased–

dishonored in its small red cave,

how it beats against constraint,

an instrument pleasing to play,

a throat longing to sing.

How, later, it shrinks to the size of a husk,

unable to recall embodiment.

Under such conditions do we live.

Some of Hunting’s poems are vignettes, slices of life that don’t explain themselves but rather show themselves, such as “American Notes,” 13 impressionistic portaits of American states. Some tap into the weighty myths, memoirs and audacity of other literary greats (perhaps Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf). Still, other Hunting works are sure to become classics, such as “After the Stravinsky Concert,” written with the minute attention and sweep of a symphonic composer.

For all the gold to mine and all the wit at which to blush, Hunting is not an easy poet. In fact, she can be hard to follow. She demands full attention and imagination from her readers, whom she can draw in and then leave mystified, querulous and mad for more. It’s the mark of a poet with guts, and one who doesn’t deliver answers but sweetly bullies readers into making up their own minds within the geometry of Hunting’s world.

“Mulroney and Others” by Baron Wormser is far easier to read. His works are, for the most part, short, spunky and recognizable. You know these teen-agers, rugged Mainers and neighbors. But, be forewarned, this is no invitation to a world that is breezy and unfettered. Just because these poems are small does not mean they are quick.

In a tone that is understated and straightforward, Wormser turns in an expose of his own life and possible glossings on the lives of those around him. These are the streets and rabble of Baltimore, Cambridge, Toronto, Miami and Maine, places where life is intrepidly American — even in Canada in a poem about a draft dodger. Wormser takes on Vietnam, alcoholism, indifference, eccentricity and squareness.

And he always comes up with the story. Here’s Mulroney “full of the dumb sap of time” and puzzled by the successful faces that fill the newspaper wedding announcements. There’s Cindy, a bank teller “full of light and youth and as much joy as could be in a brick building.” And, in the grocery store, Tammy LaChapelle, a former unspectacular student with “a pride in her voice that says it’s her life no matter what and she’s not apologizing to anyone.”

The particular gift in Wormser’s work is in the narrative. In “Furniture,” he tells of his cousins, the Abramowitz brothers, who owned a furniture store. They ran a color-blind business in an era of racism, and are scrutinized not for their social ethics but for their business cunning. They come to bad ends, and are transformed into figures whose motives are, finally, unknowable.

Wormser is at turns funny, sad, cynical and quirky — but he is always level-headed. Even when he writes of Cuba or nepalm or anti-Semitism, there is the sense that his rage ticks to a resting heartbeat. He is poised to record, to expose, to express, but not to pounce. The language can sometimes ambush a reader with wonder, but Wormser never breaks a sweat.

“Mulroney and Others” is one of those rare books of poetry that will have resonance in the lives of nearly every reader — whether waiting to get out of high school or into the doctor’s office. Wormser mixes just the right amount of cleverness with a smart appreciation for language, humor, humanity, pain and love.