Graywolf Press

I've seen that white rooster of his neighbor's jump on the roof four times to fall through tarpaper, pipe and grate, a micturate inducing augury, in Dream of My Mother's Wedding. I know that his father, in Him, puts money in a sock; that he worries, that "He has found reasons to worry. He's found them for everyone he loves. They're like markers. He drops them in conversations the way other people drop names." I know that Patterson had everything and that he knows it, in Autobiographia (no snippets here of that one -- you simply *have* to read it yourself) but I felt, from my vantage point of close against his skin, that his everything, listed and accounted for, was ghostly compared to the solid "something" that was missing.

Some of the colors in his poems: green, in Green: A Bop, blue, in Blue Quatrains and white, in Sugar ("a tank top whiter than teeth"); red (seeds), in Lament and faded paisley (boxer shorts), in I Used to Go to Church, have become a part of me. They're patched right into my fabric.

To tug is to pull with effort; to strain at. I felt the strenuous contest here, the violent pull. A tug can also be a trace or harness and in this collection the poet has harnessed strength of mind with the fleet feet of imagery. There are saphics in this collection, sonnets, blank verse and syllabics.

The poems in this hugely accomplished book are 17, 13 and 17, forty-seven poems in three sections separated by a symbol, black marks in triangular shape, a shape that looks like it's been scratched in dirt. Dirt is dirty, dirt is fecund, and dirt/dust comprises us. And so are/do these poems.

Patterson talks about the dead, in Talking About the Dead: Sojourner Truth, and brings them to life. He vivifies a shadow from a pile of leaves, in Poem Without a Title and makes it follow me. If I make him sound like a shaman, a revival tent preacher, a lost soul, he is. Or at least his work is. And I am just the shirt-jacket off his back -- and ready to be worn again. Patterson, I'll be your jacket any time. I'll be your shaman's mask or preacher's tie. Next time you go, Patterson, put me on.

Tug, by G.E. Patterson, is available through Graywolf Press for $12.95. and also through Amazon.com.