Dot
Ron Padgett
Reviewed by Sarah Barch
Celebrated poet Ron Padgett’s latest collection Dot is a refreshing read for its wisdom and levity, or perhaps for the wisdom in its levity. In his notes on the title, Padgett asks the question, “How short can a title be and still be effective?” and explains how he was drawn to the word “dot” not only for its shortness, but also for its resonance. It’s those ideas of resonance and brevity that carry this collection. Padgett’s poems are wise, and heavy, and about the nature of reality and existence, of loss and love and growing old. But they are also short, and full of laughter. They are made from levity in the way that a comic book is made from hundreds of dots, and the way that our lives are the sum of so many small moments.
I was struck by how enjoyable of a read this collection was, and most of all, how it came across as effortless, never trying too hard (what the actual craft process is like, however, for creating poems that manage to come across as effortless, is beyond me). In his longer poems, Padgett’s loose associations feel both delightfully surprising and completely natural; in the prose poem “Both of Me,” for instance, how could I have anticipated that the humorous linguistic observations that begin the poem would transition to the subject of a box of matches, then to a portrait of Allen Ginsberg painted by Alex Katz? And yet I find myself trusting these turns without question.
This feels like a byproduct of Padgett’s steady, confident style. He is not proving anything to you. He does not have to. While reading his collection I felt this in my bones, and what a calming feeling this was to have as a reader. And so I’ll leave you with a short little poem that I love, called “Bubble,” so that you can see what I mean, too:
It’s a very great pleasure
to walk with you in November,
our bodies sleepy in the clarity
falling across the city
and to feel a kiss alive
from a height of five feet two
and new shadows on my shirt
rising and falling as I live
and breathe with you.