Becoming Human: New Poems

By Lance Lee

Lance Lee knows that Animals, Places and the Past (his past, our pasts) all have a part to play in Becoming Human. The deer's soft eyes look at him, he thinks of death. In "The Light at Vezelay" he writes of Mary Magdalene. "Poker-Faced", he lied to his father at 12. Read all about it in this splendid new collection. Lance Lee knows what it takes and proves it skillfully in Becoming Human.

Martin Bax, Editor, Ambit, England's leading Arts Quarterly; author, The Hospital Ship

Being male and keeping some balance of mind and heart is eloquently explored in Lance Lee's Becoming Human. "The years have planted multitudes in my heart" he says, and accepting adulthood's sorrows and corruptions while moving on with one's life is a continual step-by-small-step act of heroism. It is wonderful to read a poetry that does not fear to feel, nor softens and delays the fierce depths of experience with mere agreeable anecdote or trendy nostalgia. From the child in his crib, to the boy running from the wolf beneath the stairs, from desire's greed for beauty and solace, to acknowledging the "German" and the "Jew's" joint contribution to his genetics, Lee's poems ask that we attend to that continual interior warfare which is the stuff of humanity. With his richly sensuous diction, Lance Lee tackles head on questions of love with all its dignities of aspiration and indignities of the reflective, divided self. This is an honest book, and one of the most passionate documents of the masculine heart around. Our heroic insufficiencies are acknowledged and embraced. This book moves from memory to landscape, into Dante's mind, across Italy and into Dachau. Becoming Human is a rare book; it takes time to savor and while the poet continually hungers, the poems consistently nourish. This is a book to read time and again; it's grown-up; it's real - uncompromising and very beautiful.

Pamela Stewart, The Red Window; Infrequent Mysteries

What immediately draws me into this book is the urgency and honesty with which Lance lee explores the self and its parameters. He writes about childhood when a wolf "lived beneath the stairs" whose "breath singed my legs before/I leaped to the safety of the steps," and of how when waking to terror at night, "I learned I was alone/and became human." He is deeply aware of family history, his mixed gentile and Jewish background and he examines, often through dream and vision, his attitudes and feelings. He looks unflinchingly at his own feral nature, the bear that's "my familiar stranger" - a desire to be powerful, destructive, taste pleasure and "wild freedom". There is too an extraordinary empathy with wildlife, a celebration of it, and the questioning of self and God, the spirituality which underlies all this work, is particularly moving in the nature poems. "The Wheatfield" ends:

Joy is not peace or summer's gold but this swing between barren and bursting poles that makes me complete.

The energy of Lee's writing, its sensuousness and passion is, for me, the true stuff of poetry. He deserves to be much better known.

Nyra Schneider, Insisting on Yellow ? New and Selected Poems; Panic Bird

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 3, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469786858

Lance Lee

Lance Lee is a poet and playwright, and has written in and taught screenwriting. His works have been published and produced in this country and England. He is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an environmentalist. Second Chances is his first novel.

Book preview

All Rights Reserved © 2001 by Lance Lee

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Contents

Acknowledgements

BECOMING HUMAN

RISING FAIRE

THE WOLF

1

2

3

SLEDDING TIME IN CARL

SCHURZ PARK

POKER-FACED

THE GHOST

SLEEPWALKING AT DAWN

OUR GREAT LONELINESS

Dante in Los Angeles

I MARBLE

II SEA STONE

III SCENES FROM A MOVIE

IV EXILE

A Word of Explanation

PERFORMING IN LONDON

BATS

BEACHED LIKE A WHALE

RUNNING WITH THOREAU

KILLERS

FOR SOMETHING IN THE WORLD

DOES NOT LIKE US*

CHARTRES

THE LIGHT AT VEZELAY

CATHEDRAL, AND EVENSONG

THE ABSENCE OF GOD

ALL I AM

IN THE EYE OF THE STORM

A GREY WIND IN NANTUCKET

WINTER LESSONS IN LOS ANGELES

EL NIÑO

TREES IN DECEMBER

THE WHEATFIELD

WHAT WE HAVE TO DO

TOTEM

RAVENS

THE DEER

GEESE

WHAT GOD DOES WITH OWLS

PERRY MILL POND

AN OLD BARN IN WESTON

ANGELS

BORDER CROSSING

MADONNAS AND OTHER

STRANGERS

PIAF SINGS

VENUS AT VERDUN

DRIVING INTO ITALY

RAPALLO

THE LIGHT AT RAPALLO

DACHAU

HISTORY

END OF THE CENTURY

THE QUAKER GRAVEYARD

IN NANTUCKET

WHY THE WOMAN LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER

STAYS AT POINT PINOS

1

2

3

THE FRUIT TREES AT GUNNERS-

BURY CEMETERY

DUST

INNOCENCE

WOLF WIND

THE SOUTH SUSSEX DOWNS

PREVIOUS BOOKS

Poetry

WRESTLING WITH THE ANGEL

Plays

TIME’S UP AND OTHER PLAYS

TIME’S UP

FOX, HOUND & HUNTRESS

in Vol. 10, PLAYWRIGHTS FOR TOMORROW

Fiction

SECOND CHANCES

Non-Fiction

A POETICS FOR SCREENWRITERS

THE UNDERSTRUCTURE OF WRITING FOR FILM

AND TELEVISION

(WITH BEN BRADY)

Acknowledgements

Almost all of these poems have previously appeared in the United Kingdom often in multiple issues of Acumen, Agenda, Ambit, Iron, The North, Orbis, Outposts, Pennine Platform, Poetry Nottingham, Psychopoetica, Scintilla, Seam, STAND, and Staple.

Special thanks go to Ambit for first publishing the Dante in Los Angeles sequence, and to Agenda for featuring Why The Woman Lighthouse Keeper Stays…

Publications in the United States have included Antioch Review, Nimrod, The Cape Rock, Connecticut River Review, Amelia 25, Blue Unicorn, POEM, and Solo 2. Bats appeared in an earlier version in Wrestling With The Angel.

Portrait used by permission of Ron Sandford Cover Photo by Lance Lee

To Jeanne

Life is not a stroll across a field.

Pasternak, Hamlet

BECOMING HUMAN

The dog’s tail pounds the crib’s bars,

black and ominous, waking me—

or the moans do from the nearby bed

where my parents couple. Slowly

my eyes move up the wall,

but where the ceiling should enfold,

star beyond star pulls me deeply

into the night. Fear swells,

and my heart throbs—I gulp the

breathless vacuum, and thrash—

then wake, swallowing

great gulfs of air like milk.

Slowly night spins down

and topples over.. I see the terror

that fills my heart so suddenly, so often,

is just the memory dreamed here

of how I learned I was alone

and became human. That terror lies

at the root, nutriment and gnawing tooth:

it is the life I must not wake from, now.

RISING FAIRE

Just this phrase glimpsed from an old book:

‘rising faire,’ the gothic ‘s’ an ‘f’ shape:

nothing more. I grieve when grief

is done, give thanks

once the moment has passed, armored

against all current passion,

not rising faire, but before, or after.

That ‘rising faire’ betrays an innocent

joy in life, the mirror to see

present impairment by.

It’s the state every child knows

daily rising faire to eternity:

I knew it then.

Lament with me,

or dream of rising faire again

to faith undamaged, love uncompromised

and requited: to the life

we let slip away, much as a child

who leaves his