Love in the Last Days: After Tristan and Iseult

Former Brooklyn poet laureate Nurkse (A Night in Brooklyn) has selected the powerful love of Tristan and Iseult as the focus of his 11th book of poetry. Deeply rooted in the oldest surviving literary versions of the tale (by Gottfried von Strassburg, Beroul, and Thomas of Britain), Nurkse's long, narrative poems offers many lyric utterances in different voices (Iseult's servant Brangien, Tristan's horse, and, of course, the lovers themselves) as it ranges across the legendary landscapes, blessed and unblessed, of Logres, Morois, and Avalon. The tragic tale of the romance between Tristan and Iseult is famously a lure for talents great and small, but the power and the ambiguities of the many possibilities of the narrative tend to swamp most writers, and Nurkse's poem, while attractive, intelligent, and broadly sympathetic to many perspectives, rarely startles or dazzles. A tad lukewarm yet touching and moving, this faintly melancholy tribute to a legendary passion is perhaps best read side by side with Joseph Bédier's almost affectless prose version.