Justice's poetry deserves to be read

Originally printed July 13, 2011, in the Iowa City Press-Citizen.

"Donald Justice is dead," Donald Justice himself wrote toward the middle of his poem "Variations on a Text by Vallejo," which was included in his 1973 collection, "Departures."

That sentence took on new meaning in 2004, when the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and longtime Iowa City resident died just a few weeks before the publication of his "Collected Poems," which provided a 300-page distillation of a lifetime's worth of work from a man often hailed as a "poet's poet."

While still in mourning for the poet, devoted readers that year were given a single volume in which they could travel from Justice's early work in the 1960 collection "The Summer Anniversaries" ("Great Leo roared at my birth"), through his mid-life poems the 1967 collection "Night Life" (1967) ("Men at forty / Learn to close softly / The doors to rooms they will not be / Coming back to"), through his experimental poems in "Departures" ("This poem is not addressed to you"), through his 1987 collection "The Sunset Maker" ("Nostalgia comes with the smell of rain, you know") through the new poems included among his later selections ("O prolong / Now the sorrow if that is all there is to prolong").
Seven years later, Justice's devoted readers now have a companion volume to read alongside the "Collected Poems": Jerry Harp's new critical biography, "For Us, What Music? The Life and Poetry of Donald Justice." Harp, the author of three books of poems himself, studied with Justice at the University of Florida in the 1980s and visited with the retired poet often in his last decade. His 170-page book, recently published by the University of Iowa Press, is itself a distillation of years' worth of conversations with Justice and his wife, Jean.

As its subtitle suggests, "For Us, What Music?" provides a helpful blend of biography and literary analysis to tell the story of the man and the poems. Although Justice is hardly considered an overtly autobiographical or confessional poet, his everyday experience always informed -- if not directly inspired -- his poetry. And his half-century, on-again/off-again relationship with Iowa City is an important chapter in our local literary history.

"For Us, What Music?" also seems equally appropriate for readers who are less acquainted with Justice's full body of work. Readers who know Justice only through his many well anthologized poems -- "Ode to a Dressmaker's Dummy," "Bus Stop," "The Assassination," "Pantoum of the Great Depression," etc. -- not only will learn about the poet's life, but they'll have a much better understanding of what about that well-crafted, technically perfect poem caught their attention so powerfully in the first place.

"Donald Justice is dead," but Jerry Harp helps remind us why Justice's poetry continues to deserve to be read and reread.

Harp will be reading at 7 p.m. today in Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., as well as during this weekend's Iowa City Book Festival at 4 p.m. Saturday in the University of Iowa Main Library. He'll also be participating in a reading of Justice's poetry at 1:30 p.m. Sunday in Prairie Lights.

Shameless plug

I'll be participating in this weekend's Iowa City Book Festival as well. At 10:30 a.m. Saturday, come down to the UI Main Library for what's sure to be a lively discussion of book reviewing from me and fellow reviewers Rob Cline, John Kenyon and Robin Romm.

For a full festival schedule visit www.iowacitybookfestival.org.

Opinion editor Jeff Charis-Carlson can be contacted at  jcharisc@press-citizen.com.