[New-Poetry] Brouwer on Logan

[David Graham]

One of the best pieces I've read about William Logan as a critic  
appears in Joel Brouwer's latest review in Poetry:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=236882

A snippet:



"In his ÒVerse ChronicleÓ Logan again and again reviews poets who  
write the same poem again and again, and again and again reiterates  
identical criticisms. Logan Þnds Charles WrightÕs Buffalo Yoga (2004)  
formally shapeless and faux-sagacious in tone, and says so in many  
different ways. . . .   And by the way, do you know what Logan  
thought of WrightÕs Appalachia, back in 1999? Why, he thought that  
the poems were Òmere sketchings and jottings; and without titles it  
would be difficult to tell where one poem ends and another begins.Ó  
Wright isnÕt the only poet who receives this must-touch-the-doorknob- 
twenty-times-before-bed monomaniacal attention from Logan. Pretty  
much every time John Ashbery, Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Jorie Graham,  
Robert Hass, Ted Kooser, Sharon Olds, Robert Pinsky, Adrienne Rich,  
Gary Snyder, Mark Strand, or Derek Walcott publishes a book of poems,  
no matter how undistinguished or indistinguishable from its  
predecessor, Logan will review it, and he will say roughly the same  
things about it that he said about the last one, and, not  
infrequently, he will also complain, in the same way he did last  
time, about how repetitive this once-interesting poet has become. "




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David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu

Home Page:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz

Poetry Library:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
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