The Lost Pilot by James Tate

The Lost Pilot Reviews

• 
  Eddie Watkins

  Late Harvest
  
  I look up and see
  a white buffalo
  emerging from the
  enormous red gates
  of a cattle truck
  lumbering into
  the mouth of the sun.
  The prairie chickens
  do not seem to fear
  me; neither do the
  girls in cellophane
  fields, near me, hear me
  changing the flat tire
  on my black tractor.
  I consider screaming
  to them; then, night comes.

  
  I include this poem not because it’s the best (or my favorite), but because, of the shortest, it’s one of my favorites, and because it exemplifies so much of what’s so good about this collection – the flat, distinctly American, diction; the touches of surrealism; the comic and the melancholic tightly inter-coiled; and the exquisite and surprising music.
  
  Much of the poetry I like to read I like to read because it makes me want to write poems of my own. But Tate's poems don’t (though this one almost does). The poems that make me want to write are generally not as “prosy” as Tate’s generally are, and generally foreground the language itself (as material) more than his (Tate clearly strives for glassy transparency of language). Nevertheless, I have now read this collection a good dozen times and will surely read it many more.
  
  My focus on this collection of his is partly due to my initial dislike of his later collections (this is his first). No one who is at all attuned to contemporary poetry can deny the pervasive (even insidious) influence of James Tate. I am keenly aware of it and hated the work of his I’d read before turning to this collection. His is a type of poetry that seems easily mimicked, and so has been. And as is often the case with successful artists as they age, Tate seems to have started mimicking himself in his later books. I say this having read only a sampling of his work, so I welcome refutations. The later work of his I’ve read also lacks… something that his early works have. A few layers of ambiguity? A complexity of tone? A certain fire of the seeking spirit? Maybe it’s just youthful energy. There is something basically childlike about his poetry in its clear-eyed appraisal of the world and of human emotions, its curious focus on simple objects as if seen by someone new to this planet, and its preternatural clarity of language, primer language. It is very difficult to maintain this stance in any authentic way as one ages, as the muddy complexities of life crowd upon the perceiving mind. I don’t know what is missing in his later work, but I do know that some of his later poems focus far too much on the “surprise” ending, and so have a quality of one-off jokes that are difficult to enjoy (as the surprise no longer surprises) upon a second reading.
  
  So I just stick with this collection, and his second, The Oblivion Ha-Ha. These two contain all the Tate I feel I need to read (again, I welcome refutations).
  
  Tate’s poetry is remarkably home-grown. Demotic. It is surrealism wedded to Robert Frost, and is not dependent on the French as the poets of the New York School (Ashbery, Koch, O’Hara) were. And this American surrealism (I say “surrealism” only for convenience sake to denote a surprising weirdness in the mundane) actually ended up influencing the later Ashbery (along with a million young poets). Tate’s poetry was also fully formed from the beginning, as if newly birthed, Athena-verses from the young poet’s head.
  
  Reading James Tate does not make me want to write, nor does it draw me into its lingual interstices where interior regions open up and I feel as if I’m swimming in language while mentally arranging my own water words into temporary word worlds – it is far too glassy and stand-offish for that – but reading it does help to hone and clarify my mind, and actually rests it as upon springtime grasses as cool rain cleanses in melancholic sunlight, with tiny shadows pressing round.
  
• 
  Momo

  I want to cry each time I read the beautiful and powerful title poem of James Tate's first collection, a Yale Series Younger Poets winner published when the poet was in his early 20s. This is a wonderful, funny, playful, hallucinatory, and moving book that clearly looks forward to the profound body of work to come. Here's another favorite of mine from this volume:
  
  "Violins"
  
  She knew how to make a moment famous.
  Heifetz plucked a marvelous Sibelius.
  Meanwhile, a thunderstorm made sounds
  metastatic, like who said God
  couldn't beat a mean bass drum?
  She even brought me flowers and the rain
  slapped and shattered through the screen
  making music, more music, far too much--
  you get the picture? Violins.
  We wrote a dozen poems
  before the rainbow came.
• 
  Corey

  I hadn't read this since my 20s. In a sense it's ground zero for me; it was my first dive into contemporary poetry, and I fell in love. This, Tate's first book, still astonishes.
• 
  Michael

  Two Poems from The Lost Pilot by James Tate:
  
  Success Comes to Cow Creek
  
  I sit on the tracks,
  a hundred feet from
  earth, fifty from the
  water. Gerald is
  inching toward me
  as grim, slow, and
  determined as a
  season, because he
  has no trade and wants
  none. It's been nine months
  since I last listened
  to his fate, but I
  know what he will say:
  he's the fire hydrant
  of the underdog.
  
  When he reaches my
  point above the creek,
  he sits down without
  salutation, and
  spits profoundly out
  past the edge, and peeks
  for meaning in the ripple it brings. He
  scowls. He speaks: when you
  walk down any street
  you see nothing but
  coagulations
  of shit and vomit,
  and I'm sick of it.
  I suggest suicide;
  he prefers murder,
  and spits again for
  the sake of all the
  great devout losers.
  
  A conductor's horn
  concerto breaks the
  air, and we, two doomed
  pennies on the track,
  shove off and somersault
  like anesthetized
  fleas, ruffling the
  ideal locomotive
  poised on the water
  with our light, dry bodies.
  Gerald shouts
  terrifically as
  he sails downstream like
  a young man with a
  destination. I swim toward shore as
  fast as my boots will
  allow; as always,
  neglecting to drown.
  
  
  * * * * *
  
  Manna
  
  I do remember some things
  times when I listened and heard
  no one saying no, certain
  miraculous provisions
  of the much prayed for manna
  and once a man, it was two
  o'clock in the morning in
  Pittsburg, Kansas, I finally
  coming home from the loveliest
  drunk of them all, a train chugged,
  goddamn, struggled across a
  prairie intersection and
  a man from the caboose real-
  ly waved, honestly, and said,
  and said something like my name.
  
  
• 
  Fred

  Just dipped back to re-re-re-read the Tate books I have with me (Lost Pilot, Viper Jazz, Oblivion Ha-Ha). This nods to Stevens, then goes elsewhere quickly.
• 
  Zach

  The book that got me hooked.
• 
  Allyson

  Oh, James Tate, I love you.
• 
  Jordan

  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't chasing David Berman through his teacher. Having read only Tate's last poem, the one found in his typewriter upon his death, I figured it best to start with his first small collection. The poems in the first section were enjoyable but in sections II and III, they really shone. Finding a humor and a melancholy, occasionally absurd, that hit me just right. Occasionally a bit stilted in their language, but more often fluid and specific in just the right way.
• 
  Prince Jhonny

  Gen X avant la lettre. My most fatal flaw as a poet is constantly mixing up James Tate, Allen Tate, James Wright, Charles Wright, and James Dickey.
• 
  Christina M Rau

  James Tate's The Lost Pilot makes me feel like a fraud. He wrote this collection, had it picked up, and then published when he was still in his MFA program in Iowa. (Iowa is huge in the creative writing world--I know someone who's happy about that). You know what I did while I was in my MFA program? I got ossified.
  
  Storytelling bordering prosey but skillful enough that it all comes out poetry. That's Tate's collection. Much of it starts with a blunt You; his speaker is straightforward, talking to whomever the subject is at that time--a lover, a father, a friend. One of the best parts of the collection is the haunting echo created with the last two lines of Why I Will Not Get Out Of Bed: "I don't love you. / I don't love you." How about THAT for a love poem? Yeah, that's right. I'm now addicted to James Tate.
  
  I figured I had to own the book so I went onto Amazon. Apparently, it's hard to find. Amazon has it for over 100 bucks--that's crap. That's someone trying to fake out a buyer. Mostly, there are a few copies available for 25--40 bucks, which is too expensive for a hard copy. I'm going to have to get over to The Strand and then shop around in every used bookshop possible to find it.
• 
  Matt

  A great collection, filled with wonderful lines and images.
• 
  Lindsey

  Favorites: "The Lost Pilot," "Flight"