The eighth winner of the New Criterion Poetry Prize is Daniel Brown's Taking the Occasion. From its opening lines, his book sounds a new note in poetry: The thing about the old one about / The tree in the forest and nobody's around / And how it falls maybe with a sound, / Maybe not . . . In poem after poem, Mr. Brown plays urban speech rhythms (much as Robert Frost played rural ones) across the back-beat of meter and rhyme. Distinctive in matter as well as in manner, Taking the Occasion addresses subjects that range from a moment's fancy to stirring ruminations on existence. Brown's work repeatedly sounds emotional or philosophical depths, yet he isn't above eliciting a laugh in the process. The New Criterion, which has published poetry since 1984, is recognized as one of the foremost contemporary venues for poetry with a regard for traditional meter and poetic form.
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The New Criterion Poetry Prize, of which this collection is the eighth recipient, has become a more reliable indicator of high readability than most other poetry prizes. Of course, bearing the name of the famously “conservative” arts and letters journal (it is really high modernist), the award understandably attracts prosodically and grammatically formal verse-writers concerned with common contemporary life, which for most people is urban or suburban. So New Criterion winners are urbane, which entails valuing clear, economical communication. Who’s got time for fustian and folderol? Brown certainly doesn’t. He favors meter and rhyme (most of the latter alternating: abab, etc.) but stretches out naturally enough into varying line-lengths. There’s nothing portentous or oracular about him; he discourages significance (“A Window of an Instant”) and wittily deflates conundrums (“Missing It”). He is, in fact, a practitioner of light verse, of responses to minor, common emergent occasions. If not as jocular as Ogden Nash, he is as genuinely wise. This is what life, he seems to say, is about, serious and frivolous. Let’s not miss it. --Ray Olson
Review
"Daniel Brown's poems are splendid demonstrations of the power to be obtained from drawing the reins really tight. Yet in keeping faith with such strict forms, Brown hasn't squeezed out the breath and feeling. In particular, `The Birth of God' and `Prayer' move; quite beautiful things." --X.J. Kennedy
"Daniel Brown's poems are splendid demonstrations of the power to be obtained from drawing the reins really tight." --X. J. Kennedy, author of The Lords of Misrule
"Brown's laconic and supremely intelligent lyrics pulse with precision and wit. His work is a rare and bracing pleasure to read."
"Daniel Brown's poems are splendid demonstrations of the power to be obtained from drawing the reins really tight." --X. J. Kennedy, author of The Lords of Misrule
"Brown's laconic and supremely intelligent lyrics pulse with precision and wit. His work is a rare and bracing pleasure to read."
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply wonderful,
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This review is from: Taking the Occasion (New Criterion Series) (Hardcover)
I bought this book because it won the New Criterion Prize. Wow! I'm not a professor or critic, but these are poems that just grab you. Most are fairly traditional forms (meter and near rhymes and such), but there is nothing old feeling about these. I have read and re-read this, and found something I've enjoyed more each time.
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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