The Clearing

Written by Shakespeare and early English literature teacher Philip White, The Clearing is an anthology of brief, free-verse poems gravitating upon the somber topics of the deaths of White's parents and first wife. Ranging in emotion from detached solemnity to grief-stricken, The Clearing probes the inescapable twining of love and the sadness of loss, with a haunting yet ultimately captivating melodic tone. "Why Orpheus Looked Back": Even her voice is soundless now. She moves / like the damselflies in honeysuckle leaves / along the stream, their torsos iridescing, / wings so black they seem fluttering rents / in the tangible scene: so much silence / fringing every word, so much dark around / each wavering gleam. But what else could I / have asked of absence? I had seen its world, / the blank, evacuated gaze that wants nothing / yet embraces all we do. It was the world / I saw before me, coming back. I sang then / not for it but her, fainter though she'd grown / than air. I looked back because I knew / whichever way I looked it would be there."

Philip White is an amazing poet, and "The Clearing" is a masterpiece of a book. Without hesitation, I would say that "The Clearing" is one of the best books of modern poetry I have ever read and that reading it was one of the most emotionally involving experiences of my life. Anyone who loves words and seeks out life would benefit enormously from reading this. "The Clearing" tells the anti-linear and true story of the suicide of White's first wife, the deaths of his parents, the death of his wife's mother, the crushing pain of losing a loved one, and the miracle of finding love again. "The Clearing" delves into the nature of death and grief as does nothing else I have ever read. Moments of it are so saturated with suffering--though never in a sappy or a maudlin or a whiny manner--that the book can almost be too painful to read, too much for a person to bear. One such moment takes place at the funeral of his wife, in the poem "East Lawn," where he writes, "And as the earth fell, my heart finally failed and I cast my eye around wildly, wanting to take each thing in, not knowing what part would be lost that I might struggle into this life again." "The Clearing" contains moments of grief and introspection that no human being should ever be forced to live through themselves but that many of us probably will, and in writing about them, White displays a degree of candor and honesty that most people are scarcely capable of--and does so with such astounding articulateness and with such an eye for finding beauty in even the saddest of moments that I was often left tearful and unable to speak. This book is beautiful, in the way that great music and wild nature are beautiful, in the way that a tidal wave hanging over your city might be beautiful. This book is fearsome and sad, and yet majestically intimate, real and silencing in its near-perfection. This book is a testimony to the power of words. It shows that words, in the hands of the right person, can say nearly anything. If you are a writer, "The Clearing" will heighten your awareness of your craft and of what your medium can do. If you are alive, "The Clearing" will open your eyes to the world and strip life's calluses from your heart. In a way, and perhaps this book's author would resent my saying this, "The Clearing" gives some meaning to all of the horribleness that White had to go through, by taking all of that, all of that pain, all of that grief, all of the worst of life's experiences, and turning it into this, into something timeless and exquisite, into a work of high literary art. "The Clearing" is a book of poetry, but it could almost be considered a memoir. Strong and vivid images spill from every page. Its narrator, White, rises as a real and genuine person who has felt and experienced this book's every line. We believe him. We grow to trust him entirely, and we come to know him. His story, the story of a life, is in this--is everywhere in th