NPR Reads James Tate

NPR's "Book Reviews" revisits the prolific American poet, James Tate, who passed away just last week at the age of 71. Tate's 17th full-length collection of poetry, Dome of the Hidden Pavilion recently hit bookshelves. For NPR, Craig Morgan Teicher walks readers through a few of Tate's strengths and proclivities:

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Tate died this week, just before the publication of his new book, Dome of the Hidden Pavilion. He was 71, and one of the most popular poets of his generation, beloved as much by readers, who found in his work a more accessible and entertaining version of poetry, as by fellow-poets, who have relentlessly imitated his style for decades.

Tate was prolific — this is his 17th full-length collection, and incidentally, the sixth to employ the "X of the Y" formulation for the title (earlier iterations include the National Book Award-winning Worshipful Company of Fletchers, Memoir of the Hawk and Return to the City of White Donkeys). I mention this habit because Tate is a prime example of a poet who has worn deep groves in his mental pathways — his poems are mostly similar to one another, almost always funny and surreal, and almost always entertaining and mysteriously sad — without stomping the life out of his imagination.

A Tate poem often features a hapless protagonist (usually a well-meaning man) who stumbles into a set of ridiculous circumstances that nonetheless don't seem particularly ridiculous to him. The tone is airy, bemused — "Some things don't deserve to be contemplated" — hiding profundity beneath a relaxed surface. This man might meet a few townsfolk, each of whom will make some remark on the circumstance, which will get weirder with each remark, and then the poem then ends with a clever zinger. Usually, the action turns on increasing communication difficulties. Tate may be the only poet whose main subject is the benefit of misunderstanding. [...]

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