Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #591262 in Books
• Published on: 1995-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 450 pages

Amazon.com Review
The balance, appreciation, and clear-eyed sympathy of Hayden Carruth's 1975 essay on Robert Frost stand as a model for literary critics. His later essays on the blues, Richard Hugo, and Allen Ginsberg are similarly engaged, fair-minded, and human. Not every first-rate poet can write well about poetry, but Carruth is that rare writer who is brilliant both at making poems and discussing them. Adrienne Rich writes that these essays "keep faith with poetry," by which she means that they refuse to simplify or objectify. There is much to be learned from Carruth's prose as well as his poetry.

From Publishers Weekly
This is impassioned poetry criticism of the best sort. So good, in fact, that even those without a taste for poetry (or for criticism, for that matter) will find themselves entertained and instructed. For those for whom meter is still important, Carruth has a few essays, particularly "Three Notes on the Versewriting of Alexander Pope," that offer smart discussions of feet, accent and speed. But as a poet himself (he won an NBCC and, most recently, a Lannan), Carruth's most valuable contribution is not only context but real style and years of thinking about the more transcendental subjects of poetry. These are definitely selected essays?there are only five from the '50s, for example?but each shows the evidence of such intense thinking about both craft and meaning that almost every piece leaves the reader with some new enthusiasm. It's a hard-hearted type who won't run out and buy a volume of Edwin Muir's poetry, or dust off Pope. And even though Carruth's essay on Paul Goodman (which at 40-plus pages is by far the longest in the collection) is more a gathering of impressions than a cohesive essay, Carruth's ear for the beautiful line makes for a convincing argument on its own. It is also worthwhile to read for Carruth's very occasional speculation on the pitfalls of criticism: "We have our deplorable literary 'racket'; once it was called the 'game'; we are perhaps even pleased with it; its hazards pique our small mettle while our innocence believes that in the end History will effect conclusive judgments, raising all good poets to their proper rank in spite of our present contentions and maneuvers."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Hayden Carruth is the author of twenty-five books of poetry, a novel, four books of criticism, and two anthologies, and has held fellowships from the Bollingen, Guggenheim and Lannan foundations, as well as the NEA. His many awards include the National Book Award for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Lenore Marshall/The Nation Award.