Loomis poems luminary if dark

The poems of Jon Loomis are the perfect thing to be reading this March, which so far anyway, has certainly come in like a lion. The world of these poems, with indigo nights, smoke and snow, is very much the world around us right now. Loomis, whose first collection is Vanitas Motel, will be in Oberlin Tuesday to read from his book, which won the 1997 Field Poetry Prize. If this weather keeps up, he'll probably feel right at home.

Vanitas Motel is a sizeable first collection, and the poems therein (more than 30) are a good cohesive read. The poems are almost all short, and they all bear the same thumbprint, suggesting that they are not the work of a poet still in search of his or her voice. The mood evoked through almost all of the poems is one of sadness, one of loss. The collection is never maudlin or depressing, but certain words and images do recur, so readers already suffering from seasonal affect disorder might want to read something a bit more sunny.

The strongest work comes from the heart of the book, the second and third of the book's four sections. Take for example, "Hospital." A speaker reads a magazine in the hospital room of his grandmother, who begins telling a story: "The boy / down the hall, she said. Lost his hands in a cornpicker." Loomis is gifted at using the tiny frame of his poems for a narrative, rather than relying on the images and the language to impress a narrative onto the reader. "When they took the bandages off, she whispered, his hands // were backwards - sewed to the wrong arms."

The repitition of the hospital room setting in his poems is something which readers will not be bothered by. There is no sense that Loomis is simply limited in the way he thinks; it is more that his poems are preoccupied with certain things. Death and illness loom large in this collection. Readers will, however, be asked to forgive Loomis for plagarizing himself, as he does in instances in these poems.

Another poem which builds up an interesting narrative in a similar way is "The Peas," perhaps the strongest poem in the collection. The speaker is a 13-year-old boy, tired of hearing his father's one war story one more time. "I can imagine," says the boy simply to his father, interrupting his story. "I don't see it coming, / the back of my father's hand, the short / slap that knocks me out of my chair, // sends the whole bowl of peas / flying over my head...." Such violence, such action in the otherwise clam lines of the poem are jarring. The poem closes terrifyingly, the father leaning over his stricken son. "Not even you could imagine / that, he whispers. Not even you, smart guy."

Poems with such an obvious narrative as these are the exception rather than the rule in this collection. However, they tend to steal the show. "The Last Castrato," a poem about just that, and the succintly titled, "In the Lutheran Nursing Home, Aunt Flora Tells Two Stories," are two other gems. When Loomis is writing about art, he does so in more of an impressionistic kind of way, along the lines of the rest of the poems in the collection, and it works quite nicely. "Bathers" and "Portrait of My Father as Van Gogh" operate on this level.

A poem like "Last Days," is representative of the other kind of poem one will encounter in this collection. "Indigo sky. Bright paring / of moon in the trees. / You take your body for a walk..." he writes, setting the stage and jumping right in. These poems take on a great deal and require that the reader look further. But they are not always as effective, and they tend to run together as one reads on.

But the undeniable power of poems like "Communion," makes Vanitas Motel well worth the read. The speaker is driving home with the ashes of a loved one in a rosewood box. "Stopped for the light / on Roosevelt, I ease out / the press-fit lid." This is not simply an examination of death and mortality. "I touch / my fingertip to the flat / of my tongue. Who'd guess / it ends like this? / The taste of salt, and smoke."

It's an astonishing moment in a poem which looks, characteristically slim and unassuming. A closer examination, however, reveals Loomis is a poet with the potential to be anything but that.

Jon Loomis will read on Tuesday, March 9 at 8 p.m. in King 106.