C. S. Giscombe's Here is a long, single poem that takes place in a progression of three settings, three unlikely locations: the edges of the urban south, the edges—just beyond and just within the city—of rural Ohio, and the places where...
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C. S. Giscombe's Here is a long, single poem that takes place in a progression of three settings, three unlikely locations: the edges of the urban south, the edges—just beyond and just within the city—of rural Ohio, and the places where upstate New York forms the border with Canada, "the next country."
Here is racial in its knowledge and acknowledgment of the great geographic archetype, the journey north; yet the work's nature denies the closure of destination. The poem's interest instead is in statement(s) of situation, in "the path traced by a moving point."
"C.S. Giscombe makes evident a genius of attention to all the determinants of any one of us, our particulars, our people. He traces with consummate art the passage of time through his own accumulating presence, his points of origin and return" - Robert Creeley
"Here is a powerful, understated meditation on place, ancestry and time. Establishing themes in the first poem (ironically titled after an old railway slogan, ``Look Ahead-Look South''), Giscombe looks back to Birmingham, Ala., from a vantage point in the North (...) A diffuse, open technique avoids the hazard Giscombe identifies as ``aimless description'' and is able to take in a great deal of material, mimicking the processes of memory." - Publisher's Weekly