Customer Reviews

The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin

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

 

 

Poetry is the only art form in America that I can think of that no longer has a bracing tradition of real criticism. Novels, plays, films, operas . . . we expect critics to note honestly whatever flaws and failures they see in specific works. Critical reviews often hurt box offices and egos, but without them an art atrophies. William Logan is a thoughtful, well read, and perceptive critic known for devastating and acerbic reviews, not unmixed with praise, and this collection shows why. He is not afraid to declare that the emperor has no clothes, even when reviewing demigods like Rita Dove ("...once a poet of modest but real talent . .[now given to] self-serve opportunism") and John Ashbery (who "has less matter behind his poems than anyone but a devout dadaist"). Logan is also honest and astute on poetry in general, and his long essays are well worth careful reading. Even when Logan shocks and challenges our own sensibilities (for me, by his remarks on the truly great Richard Wilbur), his criticisms are always rooted in an intelligent reading of the poems. To see if Logan's reviews are memorable, startling, and true for you, you can sample them at the web site of The New Criterion, but you might as well get this book now and dip into it now and again as a tonic against the hushed reverence that too often greets bland, lazy or meretricious poetry.