Reviews

In his wise and accessible study, veteran critic Rosenthal offers a model of humanistic criticism that emphasizes the honesty, vulnerability, and subjectivity of poetry. Rosenthal writes with such passion and clarity that The Poet's Art would serve as an excellent introductory text. He has a genuine knack for illustrative quotations drawn from a wide range of poets, including Dante, Wordsworth, Dickinson, Rilke, Pound, Eliot, Auden, Langston Hughes, and Gary Snyder. Lehman expands on Rosenthal's concern with the genesis, growth, and final form of poetry in his Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms, a collection of 65 poems with accompanying commentaries by their authors. He suggests that each poem springs from unique circumstances that determine the poem's formal design. The selections by such writers as Ashbery, Creeley, Hollander, Merrill, and Updike are revealing and insightful, but one wonders why Lehman omits so many major poets (especially women) while including so many minor ones. Both books are valuable resources, yet Lehman's belongs more properly in a research library, while Rosenthal's deserves a place in every poetry collection.Daniel L. Guillory, English Dept., Millikin Univ., Decatur, Ill.

Some poems that begin whimsically or lightly take a serious turn not foreseen even by the poet and end up dealing with weighty concerns. To Rosenthal this comes as no surprise since writing poetry is an act of exploration in which chance associations, reverie and introspection all play a part. This poet, critic and New York University professor ponders the elusive element of luck that goes into making a poem. Choosing his examples widely from Marvell to Mayakovsky, T. S. Eliot to Philip Larkin, he shows how poets useor breakform in bringing to the surface the inner realities of the psyche. Verses from Dante and Blake support his contention that great poems approach a state of transport even as they crystallize social and political pressures in the poet's milieu. (June 29)