Guilty Knowledge, Guilty Pleasure: The Dirty Art of Poetry
Logan is a poet and a much-acclaimed critic, holding the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, the Aiken Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry, and the inaugural Randall Jarrell Award in Criticism. This is a collection of recent reviews and essays. Four epigraphs open the book, and the title seems to draw its energy from these learned sources. But the Logan of Guilty Knowledge also seems to have a strong sense of sin as he declares, with almost missionary zeal, that contemporary poetry is rotten. The eight “Verse Chronicles” contain short reviews of 47 titles by poets as diverse as Billy Collins and Geoffrey Hill. Very few survive unbloodied; many are not meant to. Among longer pieces are examinations of the work of Wallace Stevens, Philip Larkin, and Frank O’Hara, and a long and careful look at Elizabeth Bishop’s early life. Logan writes well. His sentences crackle with insight, intelligence, wit, and the despair of a prophet who sees the estate of poetry in ruins. --Michael Autrey