[New-Poetry] Oliver overcomes a bad review, and how...

[AlMaginnes at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/18/2007 11:17:48 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
AlMaginnes at aol.com writes:

 
In a message dated 2/18/2007 5:29:23 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
JforJames at aol.com writes:

Also from the NYT's Sunday Book Review...
 
OLIVER’S ARMY: Mary Oliver’s first book of  poems, “No Voyage” (1965), was 
reviewed in this publication by James Dickey,  who dumped all over it. (“She 
is good, but predictably good; one could have  foretold her from reading 
anthologies and the poetry magazines of the day.  She never seems quite to be in her 
poems, as adroit as some of them are, but  is always outside them, putting 
them together from the available literary  elements.”) The last laugh has been 
Oliver’s; she went on to win a _Pulitzer  Prize_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/pulitzer_prizes/index.html?inline=nyt-classif
ier)  in 1984 and a National Book Award in 1992. First editions of “No  Voyage
” are selling on used-book sites for as much as $900 (unsigned!).  Forty-two 
years after Dickey’s review, Oliver’s epiphanic nature poems still  divide 
critics. But at 71 she is, far and away, this country’s best-selling  poet. 
According to the _list_ 
(http://poetryfoundation.org/publishing/bestsellers.Contemporary.html)   on _poetryfoundation.org_ (http://poetryfoundation.org/) , the 
top 15  best-selling poetry volumes in America as of mid-January included no 
fewer  than five Mary Oliver titles, all published by Beacon Press of Boston.  



None of which really has anything to do with the content of Dickey's  review. 
Me, I'll take one James Dickey over a dozen Mary  Olivers.


_______________________________________________



I spoke impolitely. But my point remains--I value the best of Dickey's work  
much more than I ever will value Mary Oliver's.
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