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Unread 03-04-2002, 04:02 AM
A. E. Stallings A. E. Stallings is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: Athens, Greece
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Sigh.

I hate to say this, and no doubt I am setting myself up for some snide remarks by doing so ("Those feminists! Always whinging about oppression!"), but it is hard to ignore the strong feeling that certain folks on the formalist fringe really do seem to have something against women--or at least women poets. One reads very, very few all-out negative reviews of formal books of poetry in formalist venues--and women poets or anthologists seem to be singled out for a particular kind of venom. No doubt I am just paranoid (I certainly hope so), but it is a feeling hard to shake. Why does he feel the need not only to describe her as, but to introduce her as, a "smiling grandmother from Newburyport"--unless to put us in mind of apple pie and Hallmark verses and blue-haired lady presidents of local Poetry Societies? I dare say many of our senior male poets are grandfathers, but I don't think I've ever seen one introduced as such in a review.

Is Espaillat's poetry beautiful, and therefore pleasant to read? Yes. Does she tackle unpleasant subjects? (And does it matter?--this sort of criticism of a poet's subject reminds me of complaints that Emily Dickinson didn't "take on" slavery and the Civil War.) Well... yes. I mean, it is hard to say that a villanelle on the subject of an obstetrician carving his initials into the belly of a patient is exactly Norman Rockwell territory--especially with a chilling last line such as "Take off your clothes: here is my signature." Yes, there are such poems in this book, at least my copy. She can shock with the rest of them--grit, reality, the whole nine-yards. But what Rhina is especially good at is really much, much rarer--hard-won poems of delight, joy, forgiveness, acceptance. It is a territory where too few lyric poets plant their banners. Really, only Richard Wilbur springs immediately to mind. I suppose he, also, is a poet of Nicety-Nice.

On the other hand, such an extravagently negative review in a field usually given over to scratching the backs of fellow back-scratchers, is undoubtably a sort of compliment. If Espaillat's poetry is nicety-nice, then why is it so threatening that it needs to be taken down a peg? Perhaps it is her mainstream success (on which he dwells) that rankles.

That he claims he is not attacking Ms. Espaillat, but rather a literary clique, is disingenuous, to put it mildly. The coyly-implied link of an apparently ego-centric (?) view of the world based on her status as an only child (a biographical tidbit gleaned by Salemi from the opening poem), strikes me as unworthy of a serious reviewer. On the bright side, I hope many people will buy this book out of the controversy stirred by such a rant.

Is she soft-spoken? Yes. But it is a voice of authority, that doesn't need to raise itself to be heard. So unlike, alas, the Guardians of New Formalism.
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