Customer Reviews

Poets On Place

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Finally, an anthology about the significance and importance of place and landscape in poetry as experienced by sixty-two poets from throughout the U.S. The author, former director of the writing program at Johns Hopkins University, and his wife spent the better part of a year traveling and interviewing poets from Rhode Island to Washington State, from Minnesota to Texas, and virtually every state in-between. They met with such award-winning poets as Sam Hamill, Naomi Shihab Nye, Charles Wright, and Rita Dove. The question was always "What part does place play in your writings?" The answers were as diverse as the poets and yet remarkably similar in one respect: Place does plan an important role in writing and is much more than simply geography. Together with suitable poems, photo's ,and word portraits, this is a must read for any reader interested in the craft of writing.

I don't usually write reviews, but I was so taken by W.T. Pfefferle's Poets on Place that I felt compelled to praise it here. It provides a portrait of American poetry at the beginning of the 21st century that should be interesting and useful to both poets and scholars alike, and also a fascinating and beautifully understated story of a quest to find something of life beyond the ordinary, something beyond the cliches and stereotypes we often use to define ourselves. Much of the beauty of the book is due to Pfefferle's skill as a writer, and his own deep understanding of poetry makes the interviews read like intelligent conversations between equals. A great book.

A friend put this book in my hands as I worked on preparing a talk on the influence of place in my own poetry. I found "Poets on Place" so invaluable that I typed many pages of detailed notes to ruminate on.

It's an attractive work replete with compementary elements to the main dish of the interviews. Here we have an on-going mystery story: what will Pfefferle and his wife Beth make of thier lives after life on the road? What is life on the road like? There's enough of this to give spice to a full meal of photos, impressionistic portraits of the poets and their surroundings to give a context to the interviews, and the wonderful poems to show the fruits of place and the source of the discussion.

The foreword by David St. John is a treasure of wisdom;I draw many insights from it.

--Janet Grace Riehl, author Sightlines: A Poet's Diary

Pfefferle has got it right here, with just the perfect balance between the life-on-the-road business and the careful, thoughtful, and always engaging interviews with terrific, curious, cagey American poets. "Place" is a wonderful addition to the body of writing on and about poetry, makes a marvelous classroom addition, and is great and satisfying reading page-by-page. A tour de force performance by all involved!

One of the poets within these pages recently read at a nearby college (Scott Carins of Columbia, MO), and he talked briefly about the book. I picked it up locally and have used it to guide me to a wealth of poets I'd never heard of: Mark Wunderlich, Denise Duhamel, Richard Shelton, and David St. John. The book contains not just more than 60 interviews but also a travel-log of Pfefferle's trip. It makes for good reading for boomers like me who want to ditch it all and travel the country. Use it as a map to towns and poets.

W. T. Pfefferle went around the country talking to other writers. He asked them several questions, especially "How has place influenced your poetry?" The answers are amazing. The poets include Denise Duhamel, Mark Wunderlich, Beth Ann Fennelly, and a number of the new "breed." And several established poets like Pulitzer Prize winners Rita Dove and Mark Strand.

Photos of poets fill out the book and poems by several of the authors.

Asking variations on the basic question of what role place has in the poetry of more than 45 contemporary America poets, Pfefferle elicits a rich and revealing variety of responses. Many of the responses angle into the explicit and implicit influences of the region a particular poet is from, such as Florida, the South in general, or New England. Some poets who have moved to one or more different places reflect on changes in impressions and attachments to place. Nikki Giovanni, Peter Cooley, Mark Strand, and Charles Wright are among the poets whose names will be recognized by many. There's snapshots of some of the poets, or a photo of a local scene. And many of the numerous poets supply a poem illustrating what they have to say about the role of place in their work.