The (Pleasurable) Anxiety of (Aesthetic) Influence: Bill Berkson’s A Frank O’Hara Notebook
Long after O’Hara died, O’Hara was still influencing, shaping, editing, Berkson.
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Join NOW!Long after O’Hara died, O’Hara was still influencing, shaping, editing, Berkson.
...moreLet’s admit it: we have all been vacillating between hindrance and drawback, / but that doesn’t mean our languor is our own.
...moreDean Rader talks with Edward Hirsch about his new book Gabriel, the pain of losing a child, and the challenges of writing grief.
...moreI have often wondered if after getting these eight lines down, Plumly knew he had something magical in front of him. I have always suspected he did.
...moreI first discovered Renga: A Chain of Poems (Brazillier, 1972) in a used bookstore in New York during my first year of graduate school. I was transfixed.
...moreIf you like Hayes, if you like little books, if you like political poetry, or, if you are like me and like all three, you’ll find this book compelling.
...more[O]ne of Laux’s strengths is her willingness to break through those poetic walls so many of us construct. She seems to want no distance between herself and her reader.
...moreI found myself intrigued by all of the energy surrounding what people seem to be calling a renewed energy in Heaney’s work.
...moreFor [Christian] Wiman, form is the fire his feet are held to. It’s the syntactic embers that burn, the linguistic flames that flare. At no point does Wiman let the reader forget he is reading poetry.
...moreAi successfully blends personal autobiographical poems with her trademark dramatic monologues, making for a truly original text—a kind of personified hybridity—that is both haunting and humorous.
...moreJames Longenbach’s fourth book of poems, The Iron Key, feels like it has itself arrived from a different era.
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