We wander on up the hill, toward the back of Manning’s property. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said that all thoughts of value are conceived while walking, and for Manning, this is often how a poem begins. The earliest “literary experience” he remembers happened when he was eight and his grandparents gave him a tape recorder “about the size of a shoebox,” he says. He would go traipsing through the woods near his house and make up stories as he went. When the tape came to the end, he’d turn it over, turn around, and tell more stories as he retraced his steps home. After dark, he would sit by himself and listen to the recording. “I don’t know why I did that,” he says, spreading his arms as if for an answer. “But the idea of walking in the woods and being imaginative was an instinct I had at an early age.”

That combination has led to a deeply metaphysical vein of Manning’s poetry. In one poem his narrator asks, “…can you think / of anything more true than the God /who goes on living in a tree?” For Manning, an obvious child of Thoreau and the transcendentalists, the laws of heaven and the laws of the heart can only be read in the Book of Nature.
    - Poet Maurice Manning: A Voice in the Wilderness (Erik Reece, February/March 2019, Garden & Gun)

Monotheism in Kentucky, Present Time

I thought of beginning this utterance
by saying I had a taste today
of pure joy, but on second thought
I’m tired of purity and now
prefer mistakes—that’s it, I made
a mistake today in tending the garden
and spreading straw around the green,
encouraging the peas to climb;
I was, in short, enjoying it
and naked to the waist was I
and then it rained and I kept on working,
believing I was giving God
a hand and then I thought, what kind
of idiot thinks he’s helping God?

The Gospel of Music

You have to thank the great beyond
if your child delights in birdsong,
especially a chorus of it
a dizzy crowd of birds singing—
warbles, chits, and caws ringing
through the sanctuary of the woods.
Although I heard the birds myself,
it was the little one who pointed
her finger to the budding trees
and pronounced the word she has for music,
composed of a pair of syllables
both beginning vaguely with Y,
with emphasis rightly on the first.
It happens also to be the word
she has for donkey and the plural
of donkey. And it’s also the word
she says regarding the photograph
of an old-time banjo player
she sees at suppertime. She sees
the sound of a silent instrument,
and that’s the true Gospel of Music.
In the beginning was the word,
and the word was music and birds and donkeys,
and God was a serious banjo-player
with an inscrutable face, who said
to everything alive, I made
the world for singing. Now, you sing.

Although Robert Frost famously said that, “”Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down,” Kentucky poet Maurice Manning often seems like he should be a New Englander. Perhaps though, his choosing to write in free verse so often reflects the cultural difference between Appalachia and the Puritan North. At any rate, I don’t hate free verse as much as this guy: holy cripes, that’s a virtual drive-by. And, at his best, Mr. Manning captures something of Gerard Manley Hopkins, who is apparently an inspiration.

In conversational, vernacular poems he observes something in nature, which triggers reflections on God and then may move on to intimations of mortality or of the difficulty in comprehending “The Boss.” Not infrequently, as above, he throws up his hands and makes music, preferably banjo, and who is to say that this is not what God desires of us?

(Reviewed:09-Aug-24)

Grade: (A-) Orrin C. Judd

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Maurice Manning Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Maurice Manning (poet)
    -AUTHOR PODCAST: The Grinnin’ Possum
    -PUBLISHER PAGE: Maurice Manning (Copper Canyon Press)
    -PUBLISHER PAGE: Maurice Manning (Harper Collins)
    -FACULTY PAGE: Maurice Manning: Professor of English; Transylvania Writer in Residence (Transylvania University)
    -ENTRY: Manning, Maurice 1966- (Encyclopedia.com)
    -AWARD: Maurice Manning (Guggenheim Fellowship)
    -INDEX: Maurice Manning (Literary Matters)
    -INDEX: Maurice Manning (Cutleaf Journal)
    -INDEX: Maurice Manning (Poets.org)
    -INDEX: Maurice Manning (Poetry Foundation)
    -INDEX: Maurice Manning (POem Hunter)
    -INDEX: Maurice Manning (Plume Poetry)
    -
    -PODCAST: Poet and IU Professor Maurice Manning (Focus on Flowers, 14 October 2011)
    -PODCAST: SWC 01: Maurice Manning & GEORGE DAVID CLARK (TK with James Scott, 22 January 2019)
    -PODCAST: Maurice Manning on the Symbolic & Actual (Of the Invisible #4) (Contemplify, 25 July 2019)
    -PODCAST: Poet Maurice Manning on Abraham Lincoln, Voice in Poetry, and the Process of Imagination (Forma, 9 October 2019)
    -PODCAST: Line / Break Season 4 with Maurice Manning (Copper Canyon Press)
    -PODCAST: Matter is a Relative Matter with Maurice Manning: part 3 Permaculture Magazine()
    -
    -ESSAY: My Old Kentucky Conservatism (Maurice Manning, Nov. 5, 2012, NY Times)
    -POEMS: Maurice Manning (Quarterly West)
    -POEM: Eight Bucolics (Maurice Manning, VQR)
    -POEM: Bucolics [LIX] (Maurice Manning)
    -POEM: Like Flicks of Flame (Maurice Manning, Miracle Monocle)
    -AUDIO POEM: Maurice Manning's "On Silence" (The Daily Poem, 17 January 2019)
    -AUDIO POEM: Maurice Manning's "The Art of Poetry" (The Daily Poem, 5 November 2019)
    -AUDIO POEM: 1022: Two Shadows by Maurice Manning (The Slowdown, 18 December 2023)
    -AUDIO POEM: Maurice Manning's "Railsplitter" (The Daily Poem, 15 February 2021)
    -AUDIO POEM: Maurice Manning's "A Brief Refutation..." (The Daily Poem, 20 February 2024)
    -AUDIO POEM: Maurice Manning "The Winter of My Discontent' (The Daily Poem, 2 February 2022)
    -POEMS: Maurice Manning - Poetry (The Cortland Review)
    -POEMS: Poetry by Maurice Manning (Appalachian Places)
    -POEM: ARS POETICA SHAGGY AND BROWN by Maurice Manning (Bar City Review)
    -AUDIO: Poetry Month #3: Maurice Manning (NPR, April 19, 2001, All Things Considered)
    -POEM: Dan and Alone by Maurice Manning (Poetry Foundation)
    -POEM: Maurice Manning: A Thread Worth Pulling (Leon Literary Journal)
    -POEMS: Maurice Manning (Free Verse Journal, Winter 2008)
    -ESSAY: 17 O’Clock: Notes Toward an Imaginary Guide to Poetry and Magical Thinking in a Time of Apparent Crisis (Maurice Manning, Literary Matters)
    -ESSAY: Birds of America; Or, Tell Me a Story About Farming, Haunted Houses, and Poetry in Motion: Down on the Farm (Maurice Manning, Literary Matters)
    -POEM: Why Poor Old Mama Took to Bed (Maurice Manning, Literary Matters)
    -POEM: Passion by Maurice Manning (Still)
    POEM: The Watching Tree by Maurice Manning (Verse Daily)-
    -POEM: A Bestiary by Maurice Manning (Verse Daily)
    -POEM: On a Woodpecker Drinking from a Knothole Still Full of the Last Rain by Maurice Manning (Verse Daily)
    -POEM: Turner (Maurice Manning, The New Yorker)
    -LECTURE: Place and the Composition of Poetic Self (Maurice Manning, Warren Wilson Lecture January 2011, Literary Matters)
    -POEM: The Gospel of Music (Maurice Manning, Literary Matters)
    -POEM: Memories of an Omnipotent God (Maurice Manning, Literary Matters)
    -POEM: The Invention of Hooky (Maurice Manning, Literary Matters)
    -POEM: A Reaching Thing (Maurice Manning, LEON Literary Review)
    -POEM: The Slate by Maurice Manning (Best American Poetry, Pick of the Week)
    -POEMS: For National Poetry Month: "History," "Monotheism in Kentucky, Present Time," "My Aunt Fanny," "A Translation": A selection of new poetry by Maurice Manning. (Maurice ManningApril 21, 2014, LA Review of Books)
    -PROFILE: Poet Maurice Manning: A Voice in the Wilderness: Part Appalachian storyteller. Part modern-day Thoreau, Manning has carved out his own spot in the pantheon of American poets from a twenty-acre swath of Kentucky woods (Erik Reece, February/March 2019, Garden & Gun)
    -INTERVIEW: The Kentucky Stage: Maurice Manning on the South, Spoon River, and why he’s not a fan of Facebook. (John McIntyre, July 23, 2013, Poetry Foundation)
    -INTERVIEW: Quantum Cowboys and Honky Tonk Heroes: A Conversation with Maurice Manning (Bryan Penberthy and Anne Zimmerman)
    -INTERVIEW: A Conversation with Maurice Manning: An Interview by Ben Palpant (Words Under the Words No. 5, Mar 25, 2024, The Rabbit Room)
    -INTERVIEW: Maurice Manning (Light Box Poetry)
    -INTERVIEW: “The Sound of the World Alive”: A Conversation with Maurice Manning (Brian Brodeur, Literary Matters)
    -PROFILE: Maurice Manning (Arwen Donaghue, Rooted Words)
    -PROFILE: Dr. Maurice Manning & “The Grinnin’ Possum” (Lyra Duffly, 10/11/23, The Rambler)
    -INTERVIEW: AN APPALACHIAN HERITAGE INTERVIEW: MAURICE MANNING (Marianne Worthington, Fall 2017, Appalachian Heritage)
    -PROFILE: Kentucky poet connects to Mainers through common language of rural life (University of Southern Maine, 10/30/23)
    -INTERVIEW: Maurice Manning: A Mighty Fortress is Our God ((Jeffrey L. Johnson, April 16, 2018, Poets on Hymns)
    -VIDEO INTERVIEW: Poet's Café - 4/26 - Maurice Manning
    -AUDIO INTERVIEW: Maurice Manning (Katerina Stoykova, August 9, 2023, WUKY)
    -INTERVIEW: Bitter, Sweet Transcendence: An Interview with Maurice Manning (Swartwout, Susan.? Winter 2013, Southern Quarterly)
    -ESSAY: “The Rhapsodic Fallacy” and Maurice Manning’s “Snakedoctor” (Johnny Payne, 05/12/2024, Merion West)
    -ESSAY: A MERCY BRANCHES OUT: The Poetry of Maurice Manning (Tamara Miles, Verity LA)
    -ESSAY: A Kingdom of Mediacy: On Maurice Manning and Snakedoctor (Timothy Kleiser, Literary Matters)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Maurice Manning Poetry (Poem Analysis)
    -ARCHIVE: creator:"Manning, Maurice, 1943-" (Internet Archive)
    -REVIEW: of Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions by Maurice Manning. (Dwight Garner, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions (Ravi Shakar, Surveying the Landscape)
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of Maurice Manning. One Man's Dark ( John Lang, Appalachian Heritage)
    -REVIEW: of The Common Man (Cecily Parks, Charlotte Lit)
    -REVIEW: of Bucolics by Maurice Manning (Rattle)
    -REVIEW: of Bucolics (Isak)
    -REVIEW: of Railsplitter by Maurice Manning (wesley Sexton, Adroit Journal)

Book-related and General Links: