I always relish Logan's "acidulous rhetoric" when he's trashing poets like Graham whom I despise. From the little I've seen of his own work, I regard him as a middling poet, not really worthy to shine the shoes of a Davis, a Wilbur or Hecht. And I wonder to what degree he is motivated by envy. On his latest book, by way of blurb, he quotes Robert McDowell: "The most hated man in American poetry." Now that's a guy with a hell of a chip on his shoulder. Yet he is very clever, and in person he is perfectly affable. He maintains that the non-accomplishment of the New Formalists is ascribable to our learning meter and rhyme too late in life to gain any real facility. That may be true of some of us, but others (like Steele, Gwynn, yours truly, Davis, etc.) never wasted a minute on free verse and were writing formally in our teens. I believe it probably is true of Logan, who like me, studied with Strand and Howard at Yale around 1970, and probably didn't turn to form until he was in his twenties, perhaps at Iowa. To his credit he is fiercely loyal to Donald Justice.

Here's a witty epigram from Belonging which Professor Logan didn't quote--perhaps because it cuts too near the bone.

"We Make The Canon"

--a Professor of Literature

An angry pustule on the face of letters:
A zealous Zoilus carping at his betters--

Who has the cheek to claim that he's the cause
The cheek he spoils has garnered such applause.

I agree with Roger's comments above. The best contemporary poetry critics--James Fenton, Dana Gioia, Tom Disch, and Bruce Bawer all spring immediately to mind--are just as witty and iconoclastic as Logan, just as willing to puncture poetic pretension and silliness. But they can appreciate as well as excoriate, and their enthusiasms--often, for new or neglected talents--are infectious. When he was writing regular poetry reviews in England, for PN Review among other journals, Dick Davis was this kind of critic too (I believe he was the first reviewer to praise Wendy Cope's early poems). That sort of generosity is missing in Logan. The only pleasure I've derived from his reviews is (when I happen to dislike the poet on whom he's turned his sights) the comparatively cheap one of schadenfreude.

As for Belonging, it's a testament to the book's manifold pleasures that the first batch of 20 copies sold out the first day at West Chester.

As an aside, I can't help but notice that Logan seems to drip particular venom on poets who take as their subject married love. Interesting, for instance, that he holds up for ridicule the opening line of the splendid and touching "A Monorhyme for the Shower," which celebrates desire's endurance in a union lasting more than twenty years (how anybody could perceive such a poem as "dogged" or "humdrum" is beyond me). And what sort of criticism is it to say of Davis's poems that "if they were married, they'd be monogamous"? Richard Wilbur is of course another great poet of marriage, and marital happiness. And Logan disparaged Mary Jo Salter's latest book a few years back in similar terms. I haven't read that much of his criticism, so I don't know whether it generally holds true, but the pattern seems striking.

Yes, I also was rather surprised to find "monogamous" such a pejorative term! (It does seem telling somehow...)

"Monorhyme for the Shower" is perhaps my favorite poem in the book. What perversity to pick that poem to carp on.

Great poem, Tim! I suspect that Logan's work will survive only as a brief reference in a footnote to your poem, included by some future anthologist by way of explanation.

I would be tired of hearing about William Logan if I heard more about him. I think his negative critical personality induces such anxiety because of a kind of dramatic irony, similar to that found in the characterization of the most nightmarish antagonists as smart, well-dressed gentlemen. He shows verbal intelligence by his use of diction, syntax, and punctuation. He is well read, and formulates trenchant critical remarks. He is calm and polite in person. Then again, in print he is always on the offensive against those capable people who, at a given moment, might see a point in rendering him publicly null. The time is seldom ripe to criticize his bland, mediocre poetry, and his po-faced obsession with pointing out over and over again that there will ever only be one Milton or one Shakespeare, and his disingenuous, tiresome playing of the Marketplace-of-ideas Card. It isn’t surprising, considering his purpose as a critic, which is apparently to win by knocking the cards on the floor, that he should come to the game exercising every other available caution. But this should distract no one from the fact that, far from relying on serious analysis, he really relies in his criticism on a mixture of simple assertion, pedantry, mere rhetoric, and audacity to argue his inscrutable taste with as much certainty as if it were scientifically grounded. One problem with answering this kind of thing is that, because he is intelligent and industrious, it is a pain to address the particular points on which he is most groundlessly smug or inconsistent--unless your purpose is like his. It is an awkward pain to argue defensively. It is exhausting to separate, formally, the bad and gratuitous from whatever might be persuasive. These are also pains that most people are probably inclined to live with because they are hardly life threatening. But they may unfortunately always be there as long as he writes. It is the fact that no one knows what to do about pains such as these that creates anxiety and in the end does little but reduce the quality of life somewhat. Though it might cause anxiety, my suggestion (for whatever it's worth) would be to let him remain as he is: a de facto nihilist in the guise of an uncompromising idealist, a man concerned mainly with developing an already crazed sense of the absolute sovereignty of his own critical judgment. It regards him more than it does anyone else.

Thanks, Bruce: "Isn't it pretty to think so?" And Josh, welcome to the Sphere. Are you the dedicatee of Dick's lovely poem, "Aubade?" No, I don't think Logan's criticism will quite have the shelf-life of Eliot's, Arnold's, or Coleridge's. To the above enumeration of fine contemporary critics who have the capacity to make you want to read good books (a far higher and more difficult calling than Logan's), let me add the names of three of our brothers, Wakefield, Lake, and Mason.

Hi Tim. I was sorry not to see you in PA this year. I hope you're well. What's up?

Josh(ua Mehigan)

I find myself agreeing with many of the people who responded to the Logan review. With Alicia, I feel that too often Logan is simply storing up and delivering punchlines and zingers; and like Catherine and Roger, I keep looking for Logan to spend as much time praising work he likes as savaging work he doesn't.

I'm not opposed to negative criticism. In fact, I relish it. We need more of it, but when a critic seems to blast everything that comes before him, his barbs lose some of their bite.

Personally, I prefer praising work I admire. I've all but quit writing reviews, but I recently enjoyed writing a longish crtitical article on Kay Ryan for the Dictionary of Literary Biography. Likewise, I enjoyed reviewing Tim Murphy and Sam Gwynn. I'll post a link when, as I expect, the reviews come on line.

I haven't yet read Davis' s Belonging, but I heard him read the Mono-rhyme poem about his wife bathing at West Chester last year and thought it was a tour de force.

Apologies for the above speechifying. It was very late and I was outraged.