[New-Poetry] All the Logan That's Fit to Print

[Jeff Newberry]

I'm not a fan of Logan, though I may have been in the past.  At one point, I
think I thought it was some kind of "duty" to write what I conceived of as
"honest" reviews.  I don't subscribe to that Logic anymore.  Writing bad
reviews is easy--too easy.  It's like fishing in an overstocked pond--of
course, you're going to catch something and of course you're going to find
something that you don't like.

Any masochistic enjoyment I may have gotten out of Logan died with his
ill-conceived Hart Crane piece in the New York Times.  A silly &
poorly-constructed argument, the review did little to change anyone's
opinion of Crane, for better or worse.  The review probably confirmed a lot
that people already thought about Logan, though.  I mean, the guy wants to
be Randall Jarrell so bad, he can't stand it.

Tad said, "The Times, with its broader-than-the-PoWorld readership, should
be giving its reviews to someone else."

Amen & well-said.


Jeff Newberry

On 4/7/07, TheOldMole <Opus40-01 at opus40.org> wrote:
>
> I enjoy Logan, and I think he has his place, but he's better with his
> little drive-bys on a roundup of poets than he is in this full-length NY
> Times review of Derek Walcott --
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/books/review/Logan.t.html
>
> Here's a taste:
>
> Walcott had barely been noticed before he became noted. By his mid 30s,
> he was composing a verse autobiography (an act of hubris akin to a pop
> star writing his life at 19). "Another Life" (1973) is a pretentious,
> pressure-cooker affair, a tour de force fatally uneasy with itself.
> (Surely you give a few hostages to describe yourself as a prodigy, even
> if a "prodigy of the wrong age and colour.") At times it reads like "The
> Prelude" by a writer far more elegant than Wordsworth, though almost
> every line about the poet himself sounds false.
>
> The Times, with its broader-than-the-PoWorld readership, should be
> giving its reviews to someone else.
>
> --
> Tad Richards
> http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
> http://opusforty.blogspot.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>



-- 
"Memory believes before knowing remembers.  Believes longer than recollects,
longer than knowing even wonders."
—William Faulkner, Light in August


http://museoffireblog.blogspot.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20070407/88038d63/attachment.html