From Library Journal
Here, with a particular affinity to the north countries and their descendants, poet Mason (coeditor of Rebel Angels: 26 Poets on the New Formalism) presents essays about English-language poets, including Auden, Heaney, Frost (who he reminds us is of Scottish stock), Burns, Louis Simpson, Anne Sexton, and a variety of perhaps lesser-known poets working in the second half of the 20th century. He also very effectively covers a host of contemporary Irish poets (including the wonderful Eil?an N! Chuillean in). He really attempts to be even-handed when discussing the complexities of the American landscape but is oddly less convincing when he shifts to his own aesthetic and makes choices to represent that landscape. A book like this is interesting because of who it does not note, and Mason's vision seems limited to established generations (the young need not apply). Nonetheless, he is excellent on poetry in the broadest sense, offering clear and insightful comments with genuine interest and style. Without being divisive or shrill, he communicates a passion for poetry. Recommended for all libraries.
-Scott Hightower, Fordham Univ., New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
-Scott Hightower, Fordham Univ., New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Mason acknowledges his indebtedness to fellow poet-critic Dana Gioia's splendid Can Poetry Matter? (1992) right off the bat, and to everyone's benefit, he repays the debt in kind. His criticism, like Gioia's, is readable, comprehensible, and far more appreciative than de(con)structive. He is not nearly so much a content analyst as he is an aesthetic one. He likes poetry that sounds good in terms of rhythm, rhyme, sonority, consonance and assonance, and onomatopoeia; and he likes all those techniques to serve verbal meaning, denotative and connotative. In short, he likes poetry to be distinguishable from prose, and when he complains, he complains about dullness of language more than about dubious ideas. Particular objects of his appreciation in these essays include Robert Fagles' translation of the Iliad, the influence of Robert Frost on Seamus Heaney, the astonishingly fecund phenomenon of twentieth-century Irish poetry, the New Formalism in American poetry, and, in three marvelous critiques, W. H. Auden's work. Poetry criticism doesn't get any better than this. Ray Olson
