¡Bemsha SWING!

14 ago 2007

I tried to read Mark Strand the other day. In the abstract, without having a book of Strand's on hand, I would have said he is pretty good. Not my favorite style of poetry, but possibly good "of type." Yet when I actually try to read something like this I can barely tolerate it. It seems bland and colorless to me, almost unspeakably dull like Charles Wright. Yet I'm sure if I don't read him very much I'll continue to think of him as pretty good "of type."

5 comentarios:

gary barwin dijo...: What book were you trying to read? I think it matters because I think that he has some lesser books/poems which certainly fit your assessment. There are, however, some excellent poems in, say, A Blizzard of One. I wouldn't say that they're poems that would sock your knocks off in terms of their innovations, but thoughtful poems of skill and depth that have something to them.

This comment paid for by the Friends of Mark Strand Canadian Auxillary; 10:12 p. m.
Andrew Shields dijo...: Your post reveals the advantages of "bull crit," as we called it in grad school: talking about books you have never read. For a long time, I had not read "Madame Bovary," but I could talk about it because I had read so many general essays about fiction that used examples from the book to make their points. When I saw the Huppert film, the whole story was familiar, as if I were watching "Flaubert's Greatest Hits." Later, I read the book and found out that there is a lot more to it than just those scenes.

But I have also had experiences like your Strand experience, where I kind of wish I had remained at the level of bull crit.; 1:40 a. m.
Jordan dijo...: Looking at the New & Selected, eh? I liked a few poems in that Camel book of a few years back.; 8:33 a. m.
Jonathan dijo...: But, you see, I have read Blizzard of One.

I think like many people I fell in love with the poem "Eating Poetry" when I was very young. Or Levine's "They Feed They Lion." And then those poets never did anything as good afterwords.; 10:22 a. m.
Emily Lloyd dijo...: Yes. It should be called the "They Feed They Lion" effect...loved that one, great sound, great concept, but everything after...where did it come from? ("Eating Poetry" always seemed to me to have taken flight from a Shel Silverstein book).

The first time I did a 7-up or 7-down poem over 15 years ago, I chose Levine and ended up with "They Federalize They Lips." [grin]; 2:43 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!

14 ago 2007

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