To see inside, was Tillinghast’s succinct response to the question, Why do you write? This short answer holds the key to his unstinting vitality, in poetry: curiosity, observation, and reflection.
Night Train to Memphis addresses several recurring concerns. A sense of mortality runs throughout, including the title poem and the last poem in the book, “Canzona di Ringraziamento,” a “song of gratitude,” which is the title of one of the movements of Beethoven’s string quartet in A minor, opus 132. The poem concludes: “Give thanks / for this music that says no matter what, / we’re not done yet,” suggesting that though Tillinghast is intensely aware of his approaching mortality and is engaged in summing up and coming to terms with many of the events in his life, Night Train to Memphis may very well not be the last we’ll hear from him. At an age when many of the writers of his generation have gone silent and are resting on their laurels, this poet is still active and vibrant, writing at the height of his powers.
“The Feast of the Hungry” addresses the poverty and homelessness that plague our society, seen from a historical, even mythical perspective. “When the Chinese Came to Our Village,” a dramatic monologue spoken by a Tibetan refugee, describes the callous take-over of her village by the Chinese Communists, whose egalitarian rhetoric thinly masks brutal conquest, exploitation, and a ruthless determination to destroy the native culture.
