The Virtues of Poetry
“To search out excellence in poetry, or anything else, is to join a community, to rely on others for what we do not know, to invite others to rely on us.” Longenbach proves an able guide, outlining the methods of poetry and the poetic tradition. The author of four poetry collections and five previous books of criticism, he is less didactic in this volume, with aspects of a writing manual, than James Fenton is in his admirable An Introduction to English Poetry. In his preface, Longenbach introduces the terms each essay develops, focusing on work from the canon and from contemporary writers. Usinga simple, if unconventional, method to illustrate prosody, he discusses many elements, including subtle shifts of tense and mood. The essays can be read separately or in sequence. A close examination of Ezra Pound’s translations and Pisan Cantos; another of Whitman’s “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life”; a piece on the confessional aspects of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop; and “Writing Badly,” a curious but entertaining piece about the discursive element in the lyric, are the best of the 12. --Michael Autrey