Missing Rudolph Lope

Has it really been over a year since Mr. Lope posted this assessment on his now-defunct blog? if only I had more readers like him. If only someone were even reading my blog. Ah, but it's the illusion of audience that keeps us hitting "print" or "publish", isn't it?


The Poetry of Gunther Quinte 


I believe it is time now to consider the work of Gunther Quinte, a poet who, though popular on the continent, has failed to garner the attention he deserves here in the United States. I first became aware of Mr. Quinte's poetry somewhat recently when C.P. Galom urged me to consult the man's website. I was shocked, not only by the explosive originality of the verse, but by the seeming anonymity of the poet. At a recent Doe Library reading here in Berkeley, I asked several of my colleagues what they thought of Gunther Quinte's latest book (Tub Math) and was met with nothing but puzzled stares. It is my hope that, with this essay, this horrifying lacuna in the American poetic sensibility may, at last, be filled.

Though a proper introduction to Mr. Quinte's work would begin with a discussion of his first book, the brilliant, post-avant masterpiece, Poems in the Way of Experience, I shall begin instead with his most recent, and to my mind, most accomplished work, Tub Math. Tub Math's poems seethe with the experimental energy of Quinte's Crony Award-winning second book Burn Outs; but temper their experimentation with a considered, phenomenological investigation of poetic being. Consider, for example, the first lines of "Plumage Rock," perhaps the book's most arresting piece:

The organic inspector came by, itching

to certify our day. I exhaled smoke.

Ignoring for the moment the clearly Messianic figure of the "organic inspector" and the terrifying exhalation of smoke (could this be the smokey belch of Cacus, burrowed in his lair?), I am moved, even now, to swoon by the simple lyricism of these lines...