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Unread 04-16-2012, 10:37 AM
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Tony Barnstone Tony Barnstone is offline
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Thanks, Maryann. Your review is a good read. I have the book on order, still waiting, but am looking forward to dipping in. Still, it does not inspire confidence to hear how Leibowitz attacks "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"; it's easy to critique other people's sex lives (in one poem, WCW himself writes about how unbearable it would be to have the critics digging into his personal affairs) but beyond such moral judging is the question of the quality of the poem itself. To my taste, the later WCW of the triadic lines is the best of Williams, and of those poems, "Asphodel" is the very best, so if "Asphodel" is awkward and clumsy then there is not much left of the guy's work to like. I don't buy it. But I will buy the book.
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