¡Bemsha SWING!

22 jul 2005

He has it wrong... Maybe so. I often am wrong. The original context of this was that I personally, as a writer, would not use a tired phrase like "wander the earth" without some self-awareness that this was indeed a tired phrase. I would never rule out all un-ironic or "sincere" uses of language in poetry. As for that, there is plenty of "Old Sincerity" still out there. Isn't that what Louise Glück does? There's a solemnity untempered by sensitivity to tone. These people don't listen to themselves. They aren't aware of how they sound.

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Laurel dijo...: I wish I hadn't typed, "He has it wrong." It wasn't what I meant, but in the search for a "title" I mis-typed. I apologize if I started a little arguement or something. I was interested in what you were saying. It made me think about why I get so upset when people can't just "feel" things anymore...

I should have said, "I understand this differently" or maybe "I hope I can explain why one might use 'wander the earth' in a poem... though I agree with you about the Gluck. I feel much the same.

I would just phrase my objections differently.

I think my beef is with all the kids I went to grad school with, who preferred difficulty to sentimentality. As though these descriptive terms had inherent values.; 9:40 p. m.

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Blurbs & Reviews

"Jonathan Mayhew’s new work belongs to a certain class of surprising books: those so obviously necessary once they appear that it apparently required a stroke of genius to come up with the idea for them."

--Daniel Katz

"Jonathan Mayhew's Lorca is less the distinctive Spanish poet, whose murder in 1936 marked the beginning of the Civil War, than he is an American invention. From the 1940s to the end of the century, our poets have invoked Lorca-in translation, of course-as a Romantic, exotic, radical, and, in many cases, gay icon-the poet of mystery and the duende. The Lorca myth, Mayhew argues persuasively, has enriched American lyric, but it has also been an obstacle to a more adequately grounded understanding of Spanish poetry in the 20th century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute."

-Marjorie Perloff

"Enhanced by copious notes and an excellent bibliography, this book offers a perceptive, intriguing assessment of the Garcia Lorca created by the postwar generation of American poets." (Choice )

"Mayhew is a critic who is at the top of his game; he combines a breadth of knowlege of the field with acute analysis."

--John C. Wilcox, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Let me just cut through all the usual, boring book review preliminaries and say the following thing: Jonathan Mayhew has, in Apocryphal Lorca, written an amazing book. "

--Brandon Holmquest, Calque

"The great merit of Mayhew's study is his sustained effort to document and interrogate Lorca's reception, unique among American encounters with foreign literatures in its nature and extent."

--Lawrence Venuti, TLS.

"Se trata de Jonathan Mayhew y su extraordinario estudio Apocryphal Lorca. Translation, Parody, Kitsch. Esta obra se ocupa no de García Lorca sino de cómo los escritores estadounidenses han reinventado a Lorca, desde Spicer y Rothenberg hasta O’Hara y Koch. Asimismo, es una discusión de la Deep Image —¡cuánto hay que desmenuzar de ese capítulo!— y la manera en que la poética norteamericana se ha apropiado de lo lorqueano (o lorcaesco) y del concepto de lo 'otro' que éste representa. Éste es un libro repleto de sutilezas, de tesis, apuntes, datos."

--Heriberto Yépez

"Apocryphal Lorca, sin embargo, es mucho más que un estudio de las vidas posteriores de Lorca en la poesía americana entre principios de los años 50 y 70. También ofrece un acercamiento histórico a la traducción de su obra, descubriendo reseñas de prensa significativas y discurriendo acerca de reconocimientos críticos. El texto es elegante y fresco; el análisis amplio e históricamente específico."

--María Delgado, Revista de Literatura

¡Bemsha SWING!

22 jul 2005

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