Criticism at the Crossroads

Abstract

Page 14 American Book Review Grotz continued from previous page This is only problematic because Edwards, with her recurring epigraphs from Clare, invites the reader to look for such a connection. Indeed, several of these poems would resonate more fully if the shadow of Clare were removed. Further, by braiding all of these series of poems together instead of separating them into individual sections, Edwards likewise inherently suggests a connection or coherence to the book overall that the reader is hard-pressed to find. None of these poems or series, however, have much to do with the sequence of highwayman sonnets , the heart of the Edwards’s book and the poems, along with the final section, that deserve the most attention. Comprised of twelve sonnets, including a prelude “Sonnet for the Highwayman” that opens the collection, the sequence explores the interior life of highwaymen and those around them and achieves a coherence and complexity that is missing elsewhere in the book. The most successful of these capitalize on the sonnet form and make the perspective of the highwayman and his vocation take on existential significance: [H]e hears the rafters and the hinges hissing go No road is calling, no lover taunting, no unmade fortune pulls him from his house to abandon favorite chair, faithful hound, just the shutters and the windows mouthing go And yet with all of the attention Edwards gives to this sequence and the other series in the book, by far the most resonant and successful poems are the ones that exist singly and seem to come directly from Edwards’s warm and imaginative observations of contemporary life. The first section of “Alabama Interlude,” for example, describes how a crawling baby interrupts a game of Monopoly, letting the reader momentarily see the baby in the delightful paradox of being huge and destructive: [T]he baby now sits flailing at the center of the game, insisting in its right to be the baby, the owner of all properties, the arbiter of wealth, the last great family tycoon making all the rules, chewing up the fragile sibling contracts in its toothless baby mouth, compounding all the debt in its ferocious baby fists. If many of the mythical female persona poems early in the collection fail to convince the reader, Edwards shows her strength in inhabiting the male persona in “Bargain, Spent,” a poem that follows a retired man shopping for the best buys in the supermarket. An epigraph from Randall Jarrell’s “Next Day,” one of many Jarrell poems that speak through a female persona, alerts the reader to Edwards’s play with persona and gender, and like Jarrell’s, Edwards’s poem is a lovely instance of human empathy and universal expression. While being somewhat obscured by the variety of projects and sheer quantity of poems in the book, there are nevertheless some real keepers in The Highwayman’s Wife. Jennifer Grotz is the author of Cusp (2003) and teaches at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Detail from cover Criticism at the Crossroads Chad Parmenter With Parnassus: Poetry in Review folding up shop, poetry criticism faces a possible vacuum. Contemporary journals of criticism can be depended on for new readings of older and classic poets. Web venues like choriamb, the page.name, and the everthriving blogosphere, offer space for commentary on emerging work. For discussion tying the older and the emerging together, which is essential for either to really show its importance, a reader can visit sites like Boston Comment, look through book reviews in journals like Pleiades or American Book Review, or parse the critical discussions in collections of essays like Radiant Lyre (2007). While all of the above contribute wonderfully to our understanding of contemporary poetry, they offer material that’s widely dispersed across the postmodern media, and it’s up to the reader to tie it all together. That job is taken on by Jerry Harp and Jan Weissmiller, making their A Poetry Criticism Reader a vital contribution to current poetry criticism. The first of what will hopefully be many volumes, it brings together some key explications, reviews, and articulations of poetics from the 1990s to offer any reader a grasp on...