Synopses & Reviews
An illuminating look at the many forms of poetrys essential excellence by James Longenbach, a writer with “an ear as subtle and assured as any American poet now writing” (John Koethe)
“This book proposes some of the virtues to which the next poem might aspire: boldness, change, compression, dilation, doubt, excess, inevitability, intimacy, otherness, particularity, restraint, shyness, surprise, and worldliness. The word ‘virtue came to English from Latin, via Old French, and while it has acquired a moral valence, the word in its earliest uses gestured toward a magical or transcendental power, a power that might be embodied by any particular substance or act. With vices I am not concerned. Unlike the short-term history of taste, which is fueled by reprimand or correction, the history of art moves from achievement to achievement. Contemporary embodiments of poetrys virtues abound, and only our devotion to a long history of excellence allows us to recognize them.” -from James Longenbachs preface
The Virtues of Poetry is a resplendent and ultimately moving work of twelve interconnected essays, each of which describes the way in which a particular excellence is enacted in poetry. Longenbach closely reads poems by Shakespeare, Donne, Blake, Keats, Dickinson, Yeats, Pound, Bishop, and Ashbery (among others), sometimes exploring the ways in which these writers transmuted the material of their lives into art, and always emphasizing that the notions of excellence we derive from art are fluid, never fixed. Provocative, funny, and astute, The Virtues of Poetry is indispensable for readers, teachers, and writers. Longenbach reminds us that poetry delivers meaning in exacting ways, and that it is through its precision that we experience this arts lasting virtues.
Review
“A sensibility this cogent, this subtle and austere is rare; even rarer is its proof that poetry still flows through all things and transforms all things in the process.” -
Carol Muske-Dukes, The Los Angeles Times Book Review
“James Longenbach is an incontestably brilliant critic.” -Publishers Weekly
Review
Praise for
The Virtues of Poetry: "How can we ask our poets both for careful technique and for wild surprise? How can we even talk about poetry in general--how it works, what makes it good, how to read it--if the best poems stand apart from all rules, all programs? . . . Never too academic, Longenbach introduces not just great writers, but ways to think about them, ways to see how their works confront death, pursue self-doubt, and overcome their own initial limits."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review"These 12 essays . . . each unpack a poetic virtue--but not the ones your English teacher taught you to expect. . . . Longenbach's readings are wonderfully idiosyncratic."
—Zocalo Public Square"
Virtues of Poetry offers an eminently enjoyable reading experience. Longenbach is a brilliant essayist and exquisite craftsman of prose. . . . For any lover of poetry and poetry's heros and heroines, for anyone interested in further sensitizing their response to language, the book's a quick snack. . . . Longenbach is upping the ante and setting the standard for smart, palatable criticism."
—Sycamore ReviewPraise for James Longenbach:“A sensibility this cogent, this subtle and austere is rare; even rarer is its proof that poetry still flows through all things and transforms all things in the process.” —Carol Muske-Dukes, The Los Angeles Times Book Review
“James Longenbach is an incontestably brilliant critic.” —Publishers Weekly"Longenbach's spare method is that of a poet, his careful exposition like that of a poem" —Library Journal"[Longenbach has] an ear as subtle and assured as any American poet now writing." —John Koethe
About the Author
James Longenbach is a poet and critic. He is the author of The Art of the Poetic Line and several other critical works, as well as four collections of poetry, including The Iron Key. He is Joseph Henry Gilmore Professor of English at the University of Rochester.