|
|
Article: New Poetics (Sans Aristotle).(Review)
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- December 13, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 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)
|
Lives of the Poets. By Michael Schmidt. Knopf. 975 pp. $35.
You read that right: 975 pages. The book equivalent of a poetsbiography.com? How about, instead, more than sixty essaylike stories-with titles like "'Not as I suld, I wrait, but as I couth': Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, Stephen Hawes" and "'Arranging, deepening, enchanting': Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, John Ashbery, Amy Clampitt, Sharon Olds, Mark Doty"? A summa poetica that begins with a piece titled "The Match": "While the Irish football team played the Soviet Union in 1988, four English poets were confined in a radio studio in Dublin-it was the Writers' ...