Volume 15, Number 4 · September 3, 1970
O Altitudo!
By D.J. Enright
The Seamless Web
by Stanley Burnshaw
Braziller, 310 pp., $7.50
Stanley Burnshaw's long and closely knit book opens with the declaration that 'poetry begins with the body and ends with the body.' Like the snake with its tail in its mouth, it closes with the same sentence, adding 'it begins in one and ends in another.' In between a lot happens, or nothing happens: rather, a large number of fascinating questions connected with the poet-poem and poem-reader relationships are raised, discussed intelligently and cooly, and gently dropped back into that dark and unchartable sea from which they came. Or, to put it another way, in between there is a well-chosen anthology of what poets, critics, philosophers, and psychologists have had to say about the nature of art, how it comes about and what it does. Some of Mr. Burnshaw's own contributions are worthy of the company they keep.
Review, 2503 words
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