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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | 811.54 REB | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Contributors include: Elizabeth AlexanderJulia AlvarezBruce BawerRafael CampoThomas M. DischFrederick FeirsteinDana GioiaEmily GrosholzRobert Samuel GwynnMarilyn HackerRachel HadasAndrew HudginsPaul LakeSydney LeaBrad LeithauserPhillis LevinCharles MartinMarilyn NelsonMolly PeacockWyatt PruntyMary Jo SalterTimothy Reid SteeleFrederick TurnerRachel WetzsteonGreg Williamson
Reviews (2)
Booklist Review
Two of the most vital small presses issue anthologies that strut their stuff. The Gift of Tongues well indicates what Copper Canyon has been about for 25 years. The poems range temporally from antiquity to the present and geographically throughout the world. Nobel laureates (Aleixandre, Neruda, Elytis), grand old persons of literary modernism (Rexroth, H.D., Pound), and scads of senior (Carruth, Levertov, Kizer, etc.) and younger masters are Copper Canyon authors. All appear here, and founder Sam Hamill introduces the poems with the history of Copper Canyon and follows them with a delightfully annotated year-by-year listing of all its titles. Common traits that mark the poems as Copper Canyon work are cosmopolitanism (but then there is the very local poetry of David Lee), deep affinity for the moods of classical east Asian poetry, radical political sympathies (the press is located in the Pacific Northwest, after all), and preference for free verse. Rebel Angels shows that, besides its primary dedication to narrative vitality--hence its name--Story Line champions the renewed interest in regular verse forms. Editors Jarman and Mason first introduce the New Formalism, as the loose movement of younger poets writing in meter and rhyme is called, and then give us generous swatches of some of the best new formalists--Andrew Hudgins, Marilyn Hacker, Molly Peacock, etc.--including poems by two critics who have written insightfully about the movement, Dana Gioia and Bruce Bawer. Although not as impressive a gathering as Gift, this collection has the excitement of newness and rediscovery about it, and more humor, too, for meter and rhyme seem to fit funniness better than free verse (Brad Leithauser's "sonnet" consisting of end rhymes only, "Post-Coitum Tristesse," in particular should not be missed). --Ray Olson
Library Journal Review
Twenty-five young poets (by fiat born after 1940) make up the angels in this collection who carry on a curious "rebellion" against the then rebellious poetry of the 1960s and 1970s, which had waged such an effective war against rhyme, meter, narrative, and all such other traditional artifices deemed antithetical to Truth. Their work is anthologized here under the banner of "The New Formalism," a program committed to the rediscovery of the "inherent power of measured speech, even rhyme, and the power of narrative." The result is a collection of poems that clearly gain focus and accessibility from the rigor of the formulas and rules they unabashedly embrace, without, in most cases, losing the alleged honesty and sincerity that unfettered "free verse" had formerly promised. These are good poems that render a wide variety of contemporary American experiences. Recommended for general readers and particularly for those interested in modern poetry.Thomas F. Merrill, Sanibel P.L., Fla. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
