Volume 2, Number 10 · June 25, 1964
Recent Poetry: Three American Poets
By R.W. Flint
The Wreck of the Thresher
by William Meredith
Knopf, 196 pp., $4.00
Helmets
by James Dickey
Wesleyan University Press, 84 pp., $1.85
Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock
by Galway Kinnell
Houghton, Mifflin, 116 pp., $3.00
The reviewing of poetry, even at its plainest, especially at its plainest, has become one of the more exotic forms of human discourse. The cynical may attribute this to the noble bluff of a solipsist analyzing a hall of mirrors for the entertainment of an echo-chamber. But the death of poetry, like the death of God, virtue, Caesar and the novel, is always being exaggerated. I'm interested in the law of mimesis or imitative action that governs not so much the style or spirit of reviewing (both still as various as they ever were) but the subtle counterpoint between silence and statement, the docta silentia by which both poets and critics play their necessary game with those who persist in asking the Edmund Wilson-type questions about where poetry 'stands' and what it 'does.' And interested also in those tantalizing kingdoms of the clouds that materialize and vanish in a season. William Meredith, for instance, is credited with being 'a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets,' but when I asked a distinguished poetry editor what this institution might be, or the duties, costume, and habitation of a chancellor, he drew a blank.
Review, 1463 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |