The Virtues of Poetry by James Longenbach

Abstract

reviews makes it futile to look for common thematic or stylistic patterns. As noted in the foreword, “The range of style, preoccupation, technique is vast, various and impressive.” For most poets, the only common denominator may be traced to their more or less definite Indian roots—a rather tenuous link, considered the subcontinent’s linguistic and cultural diversity, and one which may be mediated or superseded by more recent—and diverse—cultural layers (as in the case of David Dabydeen, who was born in Guyana, studied in England, writes poetry in English and Creole, and belongs more to the Caribbean than, strictly speaking, the Indian diaspora). Even so, these roots often prove to be tenacious and deep, intertwining with other threads of contemporary experience (not only diasporic or necessarily Indian) such as transculturation, delocalization, assimilation, and dissimulation to create a “staggeringly large and wide-ranging” breadth of subject matter and poetic concerns and styles. Sen’s own inquisitive range and acumen, both as poet and anthologist, help him capture such a “centrifugal, efferent, and expansive” reality in a sensible and stimulating compendium. However, given the ample differential range mentioned above, it is difficult to see how these four hundred poems by eighty-five poets may reflect “a movement in new English poetry by Indians.” Indeed, a more rigorous critical approach would have resulted in a somewhat more focused yet equally representative selection (e.g., the inclusion of such poets as Bhisham Bherwani and Amit Majmudar would have counterbalanced the omission of a few less accomplished and interesting ones). At the same time, a higher degree of editorial accuracy (for example, by indicating the publishing sources of the poems, and by dating the collections listed in the biographical profiles) would have helped substantiate Sen’s claim that most poems were never published before. Lastly, and most puzzlingly, the lack of any Indian reference in the title of the collection raises a number of questions about the editorial or marketing decision to call this a “Book of English Poetry” when its avowed focus is obviously poets who are either Indian or of Indian descent. Graziano Krätli North Haven, Connecticut James Longenbach. The Virtues of Poetry. Minneapolis, Minn. Graywolf. 2013. isbn 9781555976378 Like a man who takes clocks apart for the sheer joy of showing us the marvelous ways in which they work, James Longenbach displays a great talent for insightful close reading, a process through which he reveals the inner workings of a poem in ways that augment rather than diminish our wonder in reading it. This process is too elaborate and delicate to reproduce here, but the result is often both an astute understanding of a particular poem and a useful sketch of a broadly applicable poetic principle, as when his reading of Andrew Marvell’s “The Garden” leads him to conclude that “the language feels inexplicably complex by virtue of its restraint, by virtue of implications the language raises but does not acknowledge having raised.” For the reader intent on growing as a poet, such insights offer accessible yet admirable models for imitation. For the poetry enthusiast intent on growing as a reader, they offer a handle by which to grasp many of the best poems in English. “Restraint” is a virtue that Longenbach returns to throughout the volume, not surprisingly since Longenbach ’s own spare and evocative poetry exhibits this virtue so well. In reconsidering the paradigm of “confessional ” poetry, for example, he notes that “to varying degrees, both Lowell’s and Bishop’s poems embody a tension between reticence and revelation , a tension crucial to any art that might otherwise seem merely reticent or merely revelatory.” Using poems by Blake, Dickinson, Louise Glück, and many others, Longenbach repeatedly demonstrates the fruitful tension in great poetry between restraint and excess, showing how, “like the mortal beings who make them, poems want to exceed the restraints without which they could never have existed in the first place.” 70 World Literature Today Lorenzo Mediano The Frost on His Shoulders Lisa Dillman, tr. Europa Editions A tiny out-of-the-way village nestled in the Pyrenees Mountains harbors a secret that weighs heavily on its residents when their traditionally rigid...