Alexander Pope – Peri Bathous
[Revised March 8, 2018] In my despair for the state of the art of contemporary poetry, especially in light ofContinue Reading
Category: Literary Criticism
Poetry and Literary Criticism
Poetry Criticism – What Is It For?
Interesting panel discussion by Marjorie Perloff, Helen Vendler, Susan Wheeler, a young Stephen Burt and others. http://www.jacketmagazine.com/12/psa-panel.html Also read StephenContinue Reading
Prose style – Christopher Ricks on William Empson
Ricks sees Empson’s perception grounded in his “magnanimity,” i.e., his complete grasp of the sensibility bearing upon literary expression and the real-world circumstances to which it is addressed. So, when Empson examines the select authors in Using Biography, noticing that critical appreciation had focused on their misplaced link to Christianity, Empson finds fertile ground by attacking the question from another side, showing that this lens was in fact a way to misapprehend their work.
The Casual Perfect by Lavinia Greenlaw
Science has also shown that our sense of being “in love” is the product of the hormonal activities of phenylethylamine, norepinephrine and dopamine. In The Casual Perfect, Ms. Greenlaw has found a way to tap these hormones so that receptive readers experience a sense of love’s intoxication, its joy and pain, as if “jacked-in” to its Matrix. Indeed, this may be the greatest book of poetry about being in love since Elizabeth Barrett’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, for like that great work Ms. Greenlaw has made the trajectory of a personal love story the heartbeat of this volume.
Mark Levine’s “Unemployment” Poems
The July/August ’12 issue of POETRY features three new poems by Mark Levine, each entitled “Unemployment.” These poems are essentiallyContinue Reading
A Note on Stevens’ “Re-statement of Romance” and the ALI’s Restatement of the Law
My essay on Stevens’ “Re-statement of Romance” is now avialable through JSTOR and may be read on-line for free. It’s alsoContinue Reading
Keston Sutherland – The Next Great One
While those with an ear to the ground upon which contemporary poetry is written might be familiar with Keston Sutherland’sContinue Reading
Wallace Stevens – The “Emperor” Disrobed – The Fortress of Irony in “The Emperor of Ice-Cream”
Unlike previous interpretations which generally hold that “Emperor” exhorts us to “seize the day” (carpe diem), here the speaker is exorcising his demons in a way that simultaneously captures his abject despair, sarcasm and remorse. This follows the long tradition of the rejected poet who pours verbal abuse on the perfidious amour, his muse. The poem does not merely stand as a lament on the illusive nature of love and life, but bitter commentary on the poet’s status.
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