JAMES TATE

Poetry legend surfaces again

By RAPHAEL LUCKOM

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If poets were cowboys, James Tate would be The Man with No Name. It would be the spaghettiest western ever; his shadow would fall across the saloon door and everything inside would go quiet. Everyone would become really interested in their drinks or their cards, or, in extreme cases, just the floor beneath their feet. Maybe there'd be a gunfight, but probably not. He'd most likely leave quietly, in his own time, after which everyone would start breathing again.

Tate's new book, The Ghost Soldiers, is frankly astonishing. It's like watching someone pitch a perfect game. Each poem is animated by and structured around the same few elements. The collection is at once betrayed, confused and outgoing. Many of the poems involve the theme of schizophrenic authority, the endless adjustments and self-corrections that recall equally communist purges and more recent American revisionism. "By the time I got into [writing The Ghost Soldiers]," says Tate, "things had gotten way too serious in the world. Some of the poems took a serious bent and aimed at things in one way or another—of course, the war. When I say the war, obviously I mean the war in Iraq, but it doesn't come out as that in the book; Iraq is never mentioned, or anything like that." Many of the poems can be read as extended metaphors for life in today's world, with all its moral challenges.

Tate says the book has no specific agenda. "When I go to write, I almost never have any idea at all. I sit there for usually an hour and a half before I put a word to paper. I don't know where it's going. I have a couple sentences in mind, and I go from there. I'm not really in control—I just follow it."

At the same time, he resists what must be an enormous urge to simply rage and vent. In each poem, however wild or absurd, is a feeling of extreme honesty—: Tate never confuses or insults the reader gratuitously. Asked whether the book reflects his personal beliefs, he replies, "I don't have any belief at all, as far as I'm concerned. It's all in the work."

JAMES TATE

WED. 5.21

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