Rarely is the natural world as strikingly evoked as in Robert Hass’s second collection of poetry, Praise. Through unusual word choice, juxtaposition, and enjambment, the two-time United States poet laureate tries to put into language the unsayable, all the while remaining open to beauty. In the revelatory poem “Meditation at Lagunitas,” he writes, “There are moments when the body is as numinous / as words, days that are the good flesh continuing. / Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, / saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.” With the reference to the body’s spiritual quality, the word blackberry becomes a kind of prayer and, by means of its repetition across the collection, keeps accruing meaning. “A word is elegy to what it signifies,” he writes, and so, tangible images of kelp drench, a bee hum, eelgrass, and cedar spits are placed next to the uncertain, a something unable to be pinned down with names, something lying beyond the physical realm. Nearly a half century after its publication, this stunning collection retains its power.
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Read a lightly-edited transcript of Praise author Robert Hass’s conversation with California Book Club host John Freeman and special guest Jesse Nathan.
