On Poetry
May 3, 2012
The Poetry of Mental Unhealth: Philip Larkin 6
by Stephen Akey
Readers have a perfect right to regard Philip Larkin, as I do not, as a complete shit. But if they consider his personal failings indistinguishable from his poetry, I think the loss is theirs.
May 2, 2012
Post-40 Bloomer: Spencer Reece, The Poet’s Tale 2
by Sonya Chung
We needed such a story. The romance, the sense of “close call.” We need these stories to counter the inevitability of obscurity; we need stories that kindle our sense of hope, and possibility. In truth, I wouldn’t blame fans or journalists for altering or exaggerating the story. I understand why we need it to be as dramatic as possible.
April 12, 2012
Dream a Little Dream of Me: John Berryman 8
by Stephen Akey
Among the adjectives Vendler applies to Henry are “regressive, petulant, hysterical, childish, cunning, hypersexual, boastful, frightened, shameless, and revengeful.” Also, “complaining, greedy, lustful, and polymorphously perverse.” Did we miss anything? How about self-pitying, irresponsible, envious, and grandiose?
December 28, 2011
Race and American Poetry: Dove v. Vendler 34
by Jonathan Farmer
Vendler asks us to think of value in terms of a hypothetical and permanent future, one that will have unvarying and therefore conclusive notions of what was good and bad in our writing. It’s an exasperating argument, since it asks us to defer to the critic’s mystical conjuring of our far off progeny, a population that will, of course, have the same values as the critic herself.
November 25, 2011
A Wanderer in Poem Forest 0
by Marni Berger
My grandfather died two weeks ago, in his bed, by the sea in Maine. Two days earlier, perhaps with a little help from his morphine, he looked out his bay window and said: “I am going to run across that water.”
October 11, 2011
“I am the turnstile”: Roaming with Tomas Tranströmer 3
by Steve Himmer
I’m a rank amateur, but when I read the Boston Globe’s dismissal of Tranströmer as “an elderly Swedish poet virtually unknown outside his homeland,” it felt necessary to speak up with the voice of an amateur.
