The absolute best essays have to be about me.
Too much about the author? I drift away. Start thinking about looking at my phone. But with the best, I forget that I even have a phone. And in savoring Jerry DeNuccio’s The Metaphysics of Cutting Grass, because this is a book you savor—I was as distant from a phone as one can be.
DeNuccio offers two rules for approaching poetry that might also apply to his treasure of a book.
1. A poem (or an essay) must be comprehensible on its first read.
2. The literature must provide what T.S. Eliot called, “a shudder.” A visceral response. A recognition. A nod of the head because you feel it.
Apply those two rules to The Metaphysics of Cutting Grass and you’ll find that this book is also about you.
Why is this book like some sort of expertly cooked meal dreamed up and served by a master chef? That rare meal that both satisfies and leaves you wondering about more? Part of the reason is that as a retired English Professor, DeNuccio has spent his life walking in the mountains and valleys of literary genius. He knows what’s good. And he knows how to blend the greats into his own story. He writes;
“I wonder about wonder. I’m out for, as Lawrence Ferlinghetti says, ‘the renaissance of wonder’ I’m out for the awe of it, the reverence of it, the humility of it. I’m out for the imagination in motion of it, the adventurous flight of fancy of it.”
When DeNuccio writes, he writes alongside the gown-ups of great literature. He came ready to do that, and he succeeds. Somewhere Frost, Ferlinghetti, Steinbeck, and all the greats that are brought into this book is nodding in approval.
That “shudder” comes generously throughout the entire work. Part of it is in the beauty of the language entwined with wisdom. DeNuccio writes “The poetics of love can lie in the caressing meter of a familiar voice.” There is also a rhythm in many of the essays that will grab you and not let go. The line “my Dad danced when he mowed” in a brilliant piece that starts out about his father mowing the lawn, but then DeNuccio goes deep and you see the piece has such depth, and then finally what happens is that it turns into a story about my Dad too.
In “Nostalgia” he writes of “A lost, tinseled Ithaca to which we cannot return.” And as he leads you through connections between things you never would dream of being connected—like “The Mickey Mouse Club” and bursts of anger, you realize you’re in the hands of not just a great writer, but also a great teacher. You now know stuff you didn’t even realize you needed to know.
You think of DeNuccio’s fellow Iowa writer Marilyn Robinson. Is that who you’d compare him to? Because the same level of depth is there. But you are drawn in on first read by DeNuccio. You might, like I did, want to read him again. But that’s more for the pleasure than the comprehension.
But then you think of a song, by another fellow Iowan, Bonnie Koloc. Her signature song. The one where she sings:
“I got to believe, just to go on.
I got to believe, in all my love songs.”
Because this book is chock full of love songs. And belief.
Perhaps you can’t compare DeNuccio to anyone. Perhaps what we’re talking about here is mystery. And here’s what he says about mysteries; he says that there are “mysteries for which I do not wish a solution. It is enough for me simply to be a receptive subject of the experience of them as mysteries."
Mysteries for which you won’t wish a solution? That will get you thinking!
And if you read this book, you just might find that it’s about you. You just might find that your Dad danced when he mowed too.
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About the author
He should have written about that, and he sure did!
Connecting the abstract to the unapologetically everyday is what makes these stories so delicious to read. In an expert way, the reader is guided through spaces where the worlds of philosophy, poetry, popular culture meet, surprise, and delight. You may find yourself doing a lot of googling: "Who is Heisenberg and why was he so uncertain about things?" or you may need to brush up on your knowledge of transcendentalism (did people really need to be THAT spiritual?) or "Why was Ralph Waldo Emerson so into snow storms?" In an exercise in intellectual calisthenics - you will notice the delightful alliterations (allegiance to acquisition, or fortitude forged from foregoing) bundled up with musings and illuminations of which Jerry is an expert. And yet, you will notice his hypertextual curiosity to know and also feel the sadness and awareness on the limitation to knowing fully and completely. (Was that Socrates?) The essays inhabit an overarching wit, an 'over-soul' if you will, that tackle a variety of topics that have tickled and provoked the author to expose the inner workings of seemingly everyday things through the 'frolic architecture' of his writing -- I promise you that once you see the world through his eyes, you will be entertained, enlightened too.
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- Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2017Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
Connecting the abstract to the unapologetically everyday is what makes these stories so delicious to read. In an expert way, the reader is guided through spaces where the worlds of philosophy, poetry, popular culture meet, surprise, and delight. You may find yourself doing a lot of googling: "Who is Heisenberg and why was he so uncertain about things?" or you may need to brush up on your knowledge of transcendentalism (did people really need to be THAT spiritual?) or "Why was Ralph Waldo Emerson so into snow storms?"
He should have written about that, and he sure did!
Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2017
In an exercise in intellectual calisthenics - you will notice the delightful alliterations (allegiance to acquisition, or fortitude forged from foregoing) bundled up with musings and illuminations of which Jerry is an expert. And yet, you will notice his hypertextual curiosity to know and also feel the sadness and awareness on the limitation to knowing fully and completely. (Was that Socrates?)
The essays inhabit an overarching wit, an 'over-soul' if you will, that tackle a variety of topics that have tickled and provoked the author to expose the inner workings of seemingly everyday things through the 'frolic architecture' of his writing -- I promise you that once you see the world through his eyes, you will be entertained, enlightened too.
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