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Article: Walk on the Wild Side: Urban American Poetry since 1975.
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- June 13, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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It is one of the pleasures of reading older poets to pick up on the clues they have left behind like so many bread crumbs. In the poem "Notes at 46," published some twenty years ago, Harvey Shapiro, a keeps-to-himself, no-words-wasted kind of first-person poet, explains his method: "Not wanting to invent emotion/I pursued the flat literal,/Saying wife, children, job,/Over and over:" When even those words took on emotion, "I changed their order."
As always in the Hebraic tradition, duty before pleasure. He will let nothing come easy, least of all transcendence. The wonder of it is how vivid and engaging Shapiro's poems have turned out to be, his best lines packed ...