Friday, December 08, 2017

Very often at his best …

… Galway Kinnell's poetry transformed the world, but the world has changed - LA Times. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Nonetheless, it is hard, with all that is happening in the world and especially in America this past year, to say that this is the top book of poetry I’d recommend reading right now. Contemporary readers, especially younger ones, may have a hard time swallowing optimistic secular spiritualisms like the notion that “everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing.” Perhaps not enough room is left in these poems for another kind of wisdom: the ambiguity and uncertainty that newer poetry has become very adept at conveying.
Well, better optimistic secular spiritualisms than pessimistic political religions.

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