died last March<\/a> at the age of 84, was a much-loved poet who established the University of Alaska Anchorage\u2019s creative writing program in 1970 and taught there until his 1994 retirement. Only after his retirement did he devote himself to his own poetry, completing 18 books in rapid succession. Honored as Alaska\u2019s Poet Laureate from 1995 to 2000, he\u2019s known for his attention to detail, especially in nature, and his affinity with the ancient Chinese poets. <\/p>\nSexton\u2019s last book, published posthumously, demonstrates both of these characteristics. In three sections, \u201cDark Cloud in Isabel Pass\u201d applies a clear, empathetic eye to both the natural and human-shaped worlds Sexton inhabited. <\/p>\n
The first and largest section here presents poems of Alaska and elsewhere in the North, while the third section takes readers to the East Coast, where Sexton and his wife lived seasonally in recent years. The short middle section looks to the other east, that of the Chinese poets. The poems throughout are nearly all personal, the poet speaking as himself about what he observes and thinks.<\/p>\n
Sexton was known for composing poems on walks from his Anchorage home, and a number of poems in the first section suggest this. \u201cGreen-winged Teal,\u201d written, like many in the book, as an octave, a poem of eight lines, commemorates such a walk. \u201cIt\u2019s after supper, a good time for a walk \/ along the small stream near my house \/ where yesterday I saw a green-winged teal \/ followed by six chicks swimming upstream \/ in an unwavering line, a downy arrow. \/ I\u2019ll sit by the stream and do nothing. \/ That\u2019s what poets do, some poets anyway. \/ One time I saw not one but two rainbow rise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sexton had a gentle humor, as shown in the teal poem and again in one titled \u201cSpaceX\u201d in which he waits \u201cby the window for the moon to rise,\u201d thinking of Elon Musk and his ambitions. \u201c\u2026 then with a slight catch in my throat I recite \/ a poem that Matsuo Basho composed in its honor, \/ a poem about moonlight falling on a cottonfield.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet another, \u201cSeamus Murphy and the Otters,\u201d tells of chasing his dog\u2019s ball \u2014 the dog is Seamus Murphy \u2014 into a creek and encountering a group of hissing river otters swimming toward him. \u201cI couldn\u2019t run so I told them the story \/ of St. Cuthbert and the otters who \/ warmed the saint\u2019s feet with their breath \/ when he staggered from the icy sea \u2026\u201d The otters \u201cappeared to be thinking that over\u201d before swimming away. \u201cIt pays to be a bookish man I said to Seamus \/ before, ball in hand, I waded back to shore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several poems contemplate aging. An octave, \u201cApproaching my Eightieth Year,\u201d has the poet walking by a stream and watching mist rise from the last of the winter\u2019s snow. It ends, \u201cThat Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, was right: \/ You can\u2019t step in the same river twice. \/ I\u2019m about to turn 80, and I\u2019m contemplating \/ letting my hair grow longer, letting it flow.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Maine poems seem as fondly written \u2014 nostalgic even \u2014 as the Alaska ones. In a rare rhyming one, Sexton watches an apple picker from the comfort of his warm car. \u201cI watched as his knees seemed to buckle \/ when he bent over to lift his bucket. \/ His long white hair trailing like a comet\u2019s tail \/ in the wind-driven rain just turning to hail.\u201d In another he observes an abandoned building where he imagines accountants tallying herring catches, in another a neighbor and his refinished dory, and in another a snowman standing in wind far from town. Two poems are set in Maine graveyards \u2014 one with a gravedigger digging a hole for an urn and another in which the poet studies a gravestone for a man who died in 1800. <\/p>\n
The Isabel Pass of the book\u2019s title, a pass in the eastern Alaska Range, appears unexpectedly in the book\u2019s middle section. Here is \u201cThrough Slanting Rain\u201d in traditional couplets: \u201cBy a stream below an abandoned beaver dam, \/ one white iris about to open, \/\/ a rare circumpolar wanderer, almost a ghost. \/ Was this the iris those Tang Dynasty poets, \/\/ boney old men still capable of wonder, \/ climbed all night through slanting rain to see. \/\/ They\u2019d have understood the madness of our time. \/ Dark cloud in Isabel Pass, bitter wind rising.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Tang Dynasty was a tumultuous time, when poets were seen as exiles and migrants. Readers may pause with this poem to think about wanderers, ghosts, old men, dark clouds and rain, and \u201cthe madness of our time.\u201d Like most of Sexton\u2019s poems, this seemingly simple one bears repeated readings and contemplation.<\/p>\n
An introduction to the collection by Mike McCormick of Eagle River adds context to the work and to Sexton\u2019s beginnings and long life. Readers are fortunate to receive this final gift from a gifted and generous poet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cDark Cloud in Isabel Pass\u201d By Tom Sexton; Loom Press, 2025; $20; 87 pages. Tom Sexton, who died…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-21470","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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