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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very nice stuff.,
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This review is from: Now and Then: POEMS 1976-78 (Paperback)
Robert Penn Warren, Now and Then: New Poems 1976-1978 (Random House, 1978)
Ah,the good old days. Robert Penn Warren was a horny old goat in his seventies, and Random House still published poetry. For that matter, the birthplaces of poets were still considered as possible sites for museums. What happened? You can't tell from this book. Well, you maybe could, but the difference is subtle (which is, of course, much of the problem in telling good poetry from bad). Warren gives us a collection of mixed formal and free verse, with the free verse having such strong rhythms it often feels as if, when you have gone from a rhymed poem to a free verse poem, there's something missing in the free verse. Would that all rhyming poetry had such a quality to it. Warren free verse, as well, is excellent, and there are thousands, maybe millions, of would-be free verse writers who could (if they knew what they were looking for) learn a great deal about how to write effective free verse from this collection of work. Warren, who's been writing poetry since before some of the modern-day bards' grandfathers were alive, was the last of a breed when he died in 1989. The last of the original New Critics, not old enough to remember the Civil War, but old enough to have gotten firsthand tales from relatives. (One resists the urge to tie Warren to Allen Gurganus' oldest living Confederate widow. It is difficult, but one does so.) Old enough, certainly, to not only remember when poetry was considered a good part of this nutritious breakfast, but to have been publishing at the time. Not only that, but to be good enough at it to have landed a major contract with a major publishing house. The problem is that it's sometimes, as I said above, very hard to tell what makes for good poetry and what makes for bad poetry. In 99.9% of cases, poetry that strays from the image makes for bad poetry. Poetry and value judgments do not mix, in the main, though millions have tried to make them do so. If the poem doesn't make you see tings in your head, it's not a poem. Most of the time. There are a handful of poets over the years who have been able to pull it off (and most of their stuff is very much in the imagist tradition, they just know how and when to stray). Robert Penn Warren is one of those poets. Explaining why is rather like trying to bottle and market smoke without using mirrors. Read it, and perhaps you will understand. ****
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