Reviewed by Spencer Jardine

The Baseball Field at Night
Patricia Goedicke
Sandpoint, ID: Lost Horse Press, 2008
978-0976211488, paperback
114 pages, $16.95

The title of Patricia Goedicke’s book of poems refers to one of those places in our society that may simultaneously have a mysterious, sacred, and even frightening hold on our imaginations.  Indeed, this is the tone of Goedicke’s final book of poetry as she treats the poet’s classical repertoire with intense intimacy, namely death, love, nature, and the body. The book transports the reader to intimate moments in time and space, one of which is a deserted baseball field in the middle of the night. 

Melissa Kwasny’s introduction to the book provides a warm portrait of Goedicke that offers a personal context for many of the poems in the book. For instance, Goedicke grew up with a father who was a professor of neurology, a fact that explains Goedicke’s frequent references to the nervous system.  Additionally, Goedicke lost her mother to breast cancer, her father to lung cancer and multiple sclerosis, and her husband to senility, so it is not surprising that many poems touch on the poignant longings for a lost loved one. Personally, Goedicke fought breast cancer for much of her life and passed away due to complications on July 4, 2006, at age 75.   

Superficiality and facetiousness find no place in this vivid book of poetic images.  Goedicke follows in the tradition of Walt Whitman, singing to the rhythms of life, highlighting common images in a refreshing way.   From her poem, “Trace”:

                            Nor is it possible to find anyone out there
                                                        or even in here, but hidden
                                          in minds
                                                        like fish in weedy tanks, in haircuts less and less
                                                brilliantined, in scuffed sandals abandoned (85)

Another excerpt from “This Music Has Holes in It”:

                            none with any voice              but the rock

                            plops into the pool
                            pool guzzles it                    delicious low throated gurgle

                           what does the air feel                above it
                           child skips a stone into the water
                                                                                       it’s gone (28)

Touchingly, Goedicke focuses on the marvels of life and loved ones more than on the evanescent honors of the world.  Yet she finds that even special moments and loved ones disappear beyond our reach, as in her poem “Sooner Speak to the Moon”:

                            O Stars, O Atoms, tremble, O You
                                                        Of the so many you’s in You, how dare
                                                                      A single I even on your arm dream
                                          Of entering such an impossible pas de deux (40)

As is typical of the best poetry, Goedicke’s work yields greater insight with deeper reading. This book of poetry may appeal more to those experienced with life and the pain of losing a loved one than to the youthful caught up in the popular mainstream scene.  Generally speaking, those who take the time to read intensively (each poem multiple times), will take more away from this book of poetry than those who casually take a dip.

During her 38-year career as a poet Goedicke published twelve books of poetry and received a variety of awards for her work. The New York Times selected her 1990 book The Tongues We Speak as a Notable Book, and the American Library Association placed When Earth Begins to End among the top ten books of poetry published in the year 2000.  From 1982 until her death she taught at the University of Montana, earning many awards and honors along the way, including a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Residency in Bellagio, Italy, the H.G. Merriam Award (given to those who make significant literary contributions in the state of Montana), and the William Carlos Williams Prize.   

Reviewed by Spencer Jardine, Coordinator of Instruction, Eli M. Oboler Library, Idaho State University.