The Modern Element: Essays on Contemporary Poetry [Hardcover]

Adam Kirsch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 2008

A collection of bold, insightful, and controversial essays by “a poetry critic of the very first order” (New York Times).

Over the last ten years, through essays in The New Republic, The New Yorker, and other magazines, Adam Kirsch—“one of the most promising young poet-critics in America” (Los Angeles Times)—has established himself among the most controversial and fearless critics writing today. Sure to cause heated debate, this collection of essays surveys the world of contemporary poetry with boldness and insight, whether Kirsch is scrutinizing the reputation of popular poets such as Billy Collins and Sharon Olds or admiring the achievement of writers as different as Derek Walcott, Czeslaw Milosz, and Frederick Seidel. For readers who want an introduction to the complex world of contemporary American poetry, from major figures like Jorie Graham to the most promising poets of the younger generation, Kirsch offers close readings and bold judgments. For readers who already know that world, The Modern Element will offer a surprising and thought-provoking new perspective.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The skill of these essays, most written for the New Republic, is breathtaking. Kirsch puts his finger on exactly what is wrong with some of the most difficult (or confused or obscure) contemporary poetry with absolute lucidity, but in a respectful, almost gentlemanly way that stings far more than any snarky tirade. He is the velvet hammer of poetry critics, nailing Jorie Graham’s obfuscations (Her poems are obscure . . . because they reside in the privacy of the poet’s mind and not in the public realm where poet and reader discuss things in common); John Ashbery’s self-indulgence (To read this kind of thing can be intermittently stimulating; to read it at great length . . . is mildly masochistic), and Sharon Olds’ narcissism with just the right note of modest, almost parental disapproval. He leaves outrage to the reader. Kirsch is equally penetrating about poets he admires, particularly technicians like Derek Wolcott, Richard Wilbur, and James Merrill, making you desperate to read them, or reread them, which may be the greatest service of all. --Kevin Nance

About the Author

Adam Kirsch is the author of The Wounded Surgeon: Confession and Transformation in Six American Poets and The Thousand Wells: Poems. Book critic of the New York Sun, he lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (January 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393062716
• ISBN-13: 978-0393062717
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #603,239 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars conservative, but clear, October 10, 2008

By 

Private Citizen "PC" (Oxford MS) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Modern Element: Essays on Contemporary Poetry (Hardcover)

Kirsch's essays are crisp and clear, and he has a kind of fearlessness

which allows him to be very direct-- often usefully so-- in summing up the essential poetic

character of this poet or that. There are real insights here, and the length of the essays

often eight pages-makes them really easy to digest.

At the same time, though intelligent and insightful at times,

he suffers from premature certainty-- which, like premature ejaculation,

isn't really fair to his partner. Criticism requires generalizations and opinions,

but Kirsch will sum up and dismiss a carreer in a few words, which don't really

grant much amplitude to encompassing a whole, often valuable body of work. When he

discusses CD Wright, for instance, he divides poetry into "rude" and "reader-friendly" poetry,

and though I don't much like Wright's drift into scrambled fragmented forms, either,

she's a more interesting poet than these silly categories can accomodate. That

is an example of a young poet/critic's error-- too much swagger.

Hopefully Kirsch will continue to grow, to enlarge his categories, and to be

a little more nuanced in his assessments.

5.0 out of 5 stars Bracing, December 2, 2011

By 

Simon G. Barrett (london, england) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The modern element; essays on contemporary poetry. (Hardcover)

A critic who knows to criticise, Kirsch quietly skewers Simic ('The olives and goat cheese tasted delicious'), the 'fundamentally unchallenging' and apparently influential but alas unknown to me CD Wright, and other worthies. Few escape - not the imperturbable Ashbery (me worry?) nor the current Professor of Poetry at Oxford, the venerable Geoffrey Hill. But Kirsch likes stuff too: Derek Walcot, the Eliot of The Waste Land; he's even remarkably forbearing about that curio Howl. (Could you read it more than once without embarrassment? I was more of a Coney Island of the Mind person myself.) A surprise favourite is the possibly minor Dennis O'Driscoll ('at his best') and he probably overrates Donald Justice, but I must look out Anthony Hecht (I get him all mussed with Anthony Thwaite). Of course whipping boys Collins, B and Olds, S don't escape censure; trouble is their virtues are so readily apparent that they bring out the critics in all their majesty - but aren't we all basically narcissistic and, let's face it, a tad romantic too? The best chapter, though, consists of short notices on four carefully chosen 'individual talents' or new voices - not your usual 'young guns'; he makes you want to read them all

Kirsch asks that poetry have, not meaning exactly, but significance. He makes appeal to readers - and, by implication, writers - whose taste is built on writing of more than 'the last hundred years'. He wields his scalpel with - his own word - courtesy: words like orotundity, nugatory, perspicuous gleam from the unassuming page. (Though why would you say 'an autodidact'(5 syllables) rather than 'self-taught'(2 syllables) unless you were the teensiest bit prissy?) His unpacking of Eliot is masterly - only compare Cynthia Ozick's 1989 piece or Roger Kimball's riposte in Experiments against Reality

Of course too much verse is published - there's too much of everything. It's the distribution that needs tightening up and the world is now too bloated (too big and yet too small) for us ever to see the way clear to achieve it. As pressure insensibly mounts and we glimpse the End Game for humanity taking shape, the need for good poetry (as for goodness of all kinds), the need for discrimination and a steady hand, becomes ever more pressing. We should be grateful for Kirsch's clear-eyed presence