Gone Fishing

A Day at the Beach , by Robert Grenier. New York: Roof Books, 1984.

What locates in us as "information" has a diversity of patterns, of grids, places of various impingement and authority. We know without the least obligation of wanting to, that the language itself "speaks" insistently in its own "system," of syntax, of community, of all those bits and pieces that conjoin to say far more than any one of us might either intend or be capable of stating conclusively. The simplest seeming proposals—in fact, any of those which begin with that singular pronoun "I"—fade in the immense condition of common place, that so-called "world" in which all of necessity has to find itself. Robert Grenier is a poet, therefore, of great interest because his work takes place at the double edge of hearing and saying things—"things" which are neither simply one nor many, nor material only, nor abstract, but the complex conjunction of all such, as it leaves and enters simultaneously A Day at the Beach .

That, of course, says it with awkward, generalizing emphasis. But I want the occasion of this writing explicit. There are no didactic grids of imposed location more than the title itself makes evident—that is, no formal poems more than the instant coherence of language itself or the complex of feelings, thoughts, that move to

make use of it—with humor, reflection, sadness at times, and all the consummate ability to hear and make evident the sounding of words themselves:

Sunshine

I think almost without limit

Here the playfulness of the echo, of rhythm, of sound, makes actual what "limit" is.

A Day at the Beach offers, then, a remarkably specific place, and its ground is quite substantial. If one values the act of thought as it feels the world evident, thinks of it , like they say, and listens, then this book will be pleasure indeed. I mused for years on the reputed Chinese apothegm, "How is it far if you think it?" In this book also, the wonder is in what is.