James Tate (The Lost Pilot), who died in 2015, has given the world one last wondrous poetry collection in The Government Lake. The 43 prose poems in this collection defy easy categorization. Perhaps they're best described as parables for the peculiar moral lessons they impart, but they're especially surreal ones, full of strange characters and dream imagery, bending reality with a nonchalant assurance reminiscent of the great magical realists more than other contemporary poets. Tate is a builder of small whimsical worlds, and the reader must not so much suspend disbelief as surrender all expectations upon entering.
The book opens with "Eternity," in which a man's wife begins laying eggs. Their house becomes populated with chicks until a fox sneaks in and eats them all. After this bizarre occurrence, the couple tries to get back to a normal life. In an ending that's typical of Tate--when the reader is invited to shift perspectives and consider a lesson--the husband minimizes the whole incident until the wife reminds him: "To the chicks it was an eternity." In "Into the Night," a nun spontaneously combusts, only to come back to life. In "The Seahorse," the main character fills with gas and floats off to sea. These events are portrayed as ordinary happenstance, which makes the poems all the more alluring, as if Tate has stumbled upon another dimension hidden in plain sight.
Whether quaintly sweet or unexpectedly sour, The Government Lake is fun to read. Tate is a master of wordplay and varying mood and effect. He is a wizard who will be missed. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset