[New-Poetry] Brouwer on Logan

[Skip Fox]

Funny. Are old men destined to be only old? I hope not.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu [mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of David Graham
Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 1:59 PM
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu & Views
Subject: [New-Poetry] Brouwer on Logan

 

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 “Verse Chronicle” Logan again and again reviews poets who write the same poem again and again, and again and again reiterates identical criticisms. Logan finds  <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=7560> Charles Wright’s 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 Wright’s Appalachia, back in 1999? Why, he thought that the poems were “mere sketchings and jottings; and without titles it would be difficult to tell where one poem ends and another begins.” Wright isn’t the only poet who receives this must-touch-the-doorknob-twenty-times-before-bed monomaniacal attention from Logan. Pretty much every time  <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=233> John Ashbery,  <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=80600> Billy Collins,  <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=1850> Rita Dove,  <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=2661> Jorie Graham,  <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=2987> Robert Hass,  <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=3826> Ted Kooser,  <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=5124> Sharon Olds,  <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=5406> Robert Pinsky,  <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=5680> Adrienne Rich,  <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=6407> Gary Snyder,  <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=6621> Mark Strand, or  <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=7138> 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. "

 

 

========================================

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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