Reginald Gibbons, critic and translator, has gathered 29 essays by
20th-century poets into a collection unusual for its breadth - from
William Carlos Williams on projectivist verse, to Osip Mandelstam
on "The Word and Culture," to Robert Duncan on "Poetry and
Science," to Delmore Schwartz on "The Vocation of the Poet in the
Modern World" - plus poems about writing from Marianne Moore and
Czeslaw Milosz. Eliot and Pound are noticeably absent (except as
referral points); Gibbons has selected less available works,
including some previously untranslated - George Seferis and Luis
Cernuda appear along with pieces by Auden, Jarrell, Wallace
Stevens, and Hart Crane. And he provides a selective reading list
and short biographies as well. The essays are impressionistic
rather than academic, and do not fall into standard critical
categories - though the volume has, rather artificially, been
divided into two parts: Theory and Practice. But nothing can stop
Dylan Thomas or Gary Snyder from talking about nearly everything
else when the subject is poetry, so theory of metaphor and fine
points of prosody are woven into childhood memories and discussions
of Zen. (Wallace Stevens tells us that "Fuseli used to eat raw beef
at night before going to bed in order that his dreams might attain
a beefy violence.") Fortunately, even the diary extracts and
interviews are free from the parochial gossip that plagues so much
discussion of poets and poetry. On the whole, Gibbons has assembled
a temperate and reflective collection; and in rare instances -
Lorca's essay about the Duende, the devil-muse of poets, or
Marianne Moore's brilliant defense of idiosyncrasy - the essayist
and the poet are one, and criticism is creation. (Kirkus Reviews)
"This anthology brings together essays by 20th-century poets on
their own art: some concern themselves with its deep sources and
ultimate justifications; others deal with technique, controversies
among schools, the experience behind particular poems. The great
Modernists of most countries are presented here--Paul Valery,
Federico Garcia Lorca, Boris Pasternak, Fernando Pessoa, Eugenio
Montale, Wallace Stevens--as are a range of younger, less eminent
figures from the English-speaking world: Seamus Heaney, Denise
Levertov, Wendell Berry. . . . The reader will find here a lively
debate over the individualistic and the communal ends served by
poetry, and over other issues that divide poets: inspiration and
craft; the use or the condemnation of science; traditional and
'organic' form."--Alan Williamson, "New York Times Book Review
"
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