Alicia Stalling's Selected Poems Review in The Nation
 

I like this guy, Ruby. He's cold but I like him despite it. He gets it, especially, about the snotty free-verse tyrants who threw such temper tantrums anytime a sonnet was published in the known universe.

I bore and raised a basketball team. By age they span both the Millennial and Z generations.

They roll their eyes now, laugh at the "controversy," and say, Boomers...

Thanks, John. What a refreshing contrast to the NYT piece, although someday when I am curious what the criminals and crack addicts are up to, I might return to them ;)

J

Basing a poem on the Fibonacci sequence is little more than a parlor trick. I heard another poet, also a MacArthur winner, read a Fibonacci poem in an auditorium. I thought it was a dud, but the audience seemed impressed.

Stallings receives mixed reviews (see William Logan's take for a scorcher), which is actually a good thing if, say, you are of the mindset like the super-critical Oscar Wilde who wrote that we're in trouble when we are popular with everyone, because it means we are derivative of someone else successful, and we are in trouble when no one likes us because... Well, for obvious reasons.

The NYTimes also just gave Alicia's new book a rave review. It's not just a polite notice, either, since the review is over 1000 words. HERE

Was it just two weeks ago that a cry rang out that the NYT was hostile to poetry because they published a single dumb op-ed claiming that poetry is dead? I guess the NYT didn't agree with that op-ed, which of course they never said they did, or they would not have devoted so much space to reviewing a book of poetry, and by a formalist no less! (That The Nation devoted so much space to a formalist is also encouraging).

I note that Alicia also received a very positive, though short, review in The New Yorker this week.

I think poetry is making a comeback of sorts. In my own local B&N, the children's poetry section has almost doubled in size since a month or two ago (now it's maybe four feet of shelf space, though a couple of feet belong to Silverstein).

Well, Bob -- there are some who might call that schizophrenic behavior, but okay, whatever...



I am teasing you, of course. :o

J

The article is great (I agree with Jennifer- that's pretty much what my children say/do too).

Although I don't think the UK ever had the 'formal poetry wars' to the extent of the US, I do think 'poetry' was seen as a kind of alienating modernist self-centred thing here (perhaps the opposite of the US) and it feels like this is changing a bit.

Not much evidence beyond the local, but I have more young students (FE students 16-19) attend occasional workshops and tell me they love poetry (& their tastes are international - Emily Dickinson pops up more than a few times) whereas before COVID, 'I love poetry' was limited to a kind of 'old guard' of 'we are the poets and you are not allowed in to our very specific group'.

I've just realised, in writing this - the younger poets like reading/sharing their favourite poets. The older ones seemed to like writing poetry more.

Sarah-Jane

Jennifer, I love the way William Logan skewers the pretenders. He said that Mary Oliver "writes poetry for people who don't like poetry," which should be her epitaph. But I think he missed the mark with Stallings, who has written some beautiful poems.

I never understood formal vs free verse. If anyone were honest, god forbid, it's mostly just about how you get there. Getting there is everything.

LOL, Tim. I had not seen this particular quote before. Thank you. William keeps us humble and not so morbidly self-important. And he is actually a very beautiful spirit, as human beings go. If we get bent out of shape over a few amusing, "I'm-Paying-Attention-To-You" shots about our scribbling, well -- maybe that's a sign we should be doing some serious soul-searching and reconfiguration of our priorities.

There are starving children in the world.

J