Leo Yankevich
THE GARDEN OF THE SUN by Jerry H. Jenkins
A former marine colonel and combat soldier with over 25 years of active
service, including a tour of duty in Vietnam, Jerry Jenkins brings a store
of personal experience to the world of poetry. When approaching the
work of such a man one would not expect to find subtlety, wit and an impeccable
ear manifested over and over again:
Garden lizards hid with thin fierce grins
down in the morning glory-covered loam,
with molten eyes, and feet like tiny combs.
Sunlight glittered on their sequined skins.
Safe in their sanctuary, they awaited
morning heat to penetrate the weave
of sheltering vines. When they were warmed, they'd leave
to seek the light. I found one, dehydrated,
Crippled and still in hot midmorning sun.
I placed it back in the shade and mothering dew.
It looked at me, Confucian, as if it knew
that I meant no harm. These days, when the lizards run
To a sunny stone, and their green imperious tails
whip the rock, and their throats pulse in the heat,
I look to see if we might have chanced to meet,
but they only stare through cold reptilian veils.
(ANDROCLES AND THE LIZARDS)
Indeed, this man walks with his feet as adroitly as Theodore Roethke walked
with his. There is not a note of academic posturing and posing in his
music, no bowing to an uninspired academic sound that would doubtless make
him part of "the club", nor is there any neo-formalist tone-deafness such
as we might find in the mundane verses that are being extolled these days.
And having achieved a mastery of form, Mr. Jenkins is not at all indifferent to ideas. Each of the poems in the slim volume offers us a world to
contemplate, a garden all of its own. Like Albert Einstein and William Blake
before him, Mr. Jenkins sees the infinitely large in the infinitely small;
the past and the future in the now. And like Joseph Conrad, he sees
the horror behind the veil: the terrible bugs devouring themselves as the
dreaming clouds of heaven float over the petals and thorns of roses.
Yet the poet does not allow himself to be ensnarled in the nightmare,
for he knows as Jesus Christ and Carl Jung knew—he mustn't look too deep
for too long; he knows he mustn't talk to the devil for too long, lest he
return from the heart of darkness with vipers in his head. The beauty
above is there for a reason. Mr. Jenkins usually returns from the dark
with a deeper knowledge of himself and his surroundings, and in atonement
for the journey he often allows his senses to express their adoration.
Jerry Jenkins' collection is mature and skillfully written, and is one
this reader will return to many years hence.
