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God
Antioch Review, The, Spring, 2002 by Ned Balbo
Ned Balbo
God by Debora Greger. Penguin, 96 pp., $16.00. To frame a poetic sequence with God as your main character is no small ambition, but as Debora Greger's God confirms, the challenge, in the right hands, makes for memorable reading. Wry humor and verbal agility are Greger's hallmarks: God, retired in Florida, observes an alligator "crossing the road / to the International House of Pancakes" before he paraphrases Eliot, "I, the retired god, / watch public television much of the evening, / and go south in the winter" ("The God of the Alligators"). Greger knows how to balance popular culture against high art, the quotidian against the marvelous, and her protagonist, sometimes cranky or depressive, is never boring. In granting God a contemporary voice, Greger crafts a language rich with wordplay and allusion: "How could I be dying,/who love the smell of mildew in the morning?" God asks with a nod to Apocalypse Now's Lt. Col. Kilgore, the creator mourning the pterodactyl with which he identifies, a "leathery bird" fla pping over "the swamp primeval" ("The Third Day"). This God, a generative yet asexual force, maker of all yet absolutely singular, speaks as if sufficient unto himself in all respects but one: an endless, crushing loneliness despite his being surrounded by the plenty of creation. He is all, or created all, which, for Greger, becomes a metaphor for isolation; there is, ultimately, no other God can touch, as apparent in "The End" when God becomes the very chameleon he beholds: "I am what I cling to, bark or leaf./Seething is believing." Despite the arch context of God as a retiree, such passages invite compassion for the all-powerful being who identifies himself and his works with those of an insect-- "I, a dung beetle, who spent the day/rolling a ball of dung across the sky,/which is to say, a god. Let there be dark"--suffering, here as elsewhere, "A Tropical Depression." Beyond this thought-provoking sequence--an examination of solitude and the creative act as well as religious exploration--Greger's sixth col lection includes many other fine poems, among them "Eve at Paradise," in which the mother of us all, cast as faded starlet/torch singer, dares not face the camera for fear of showing her true age. Impressive, too, is "The Snow Leopard" segment from "The Zoo in the Rain": here, religious ritual becomes the lens through which Greger views God's creatures: "It was Sunday, church bells pealing / the birds of paradise from their painted perches...
Where was the prayer wheel spinning / for leopard and tracker alike, / for the goat bought in the village / for leopard bait?" Such lines embody the wit and clarity of Greger at her best; God, as a collection, sees the wonder in creation despite the author's ironic wink.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Antioch Review, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
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