Volume 39, Number 14 · August 13, 1992
In the Magic Circle
By Roger Shattuck
The Lost Upland: Stories of Southwest France
by W.S. Merwin
Knopf, 307 pp., $22.00
A number of modern poets have tended to explore aspects of their sensibility and of their surroundings more boldly in prose than in poetry. Baudelaire excelled at the critical essay; his prose poems and intimate journals complement Les Fleurs du mal in subtle ways we are still exploring. Hofmannsthal made a major poetic statement in The Letter of Lord Chandos (1902). Rilke speaks to many of us through the intense scenes of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. I could make a strong case for Rimbaud and even for Mallarmé as poets sometimes at their best in prose. Dylan Thomas came down to earth in his ripely sensuous stories. And a sound rule of thumb tells us that poets have been the best critics of poetry.
Review, 2707 words
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