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English 1 & 2 ♦ West Morris Central |
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Mr. David Crews |
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Contemporary Poetry |
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“At times, [Bly] is Thoreau in Minnesota, scrupulously observing the natural world, preserving the wilderness that is both within and without, unleashing his wrath against imperial power.” —Edward Hirsch |
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“For twenty years Stephen Dobyns has been a prominent voice in American poetry. . .His manner is tart, often sardonic, his imagination wildly original, his language tough, quirky, funny, yet at heart the poems are profoundly humane, poetic in the grand tradition..” —Hayden Carruth |
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“The Art lies in hiding the art, Horace tells us, and Stephen Dunn has proven himself a master of concealment. His honesty would not be so forceful were it not for his discrete formality; his poems would not be so strikingly naked were they not so carefully dressed..” —Billy Collins |
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“Hoagland’s unerring poems—scathing, rueful, tender, always disarming—move like arrows through a target—the poet and the rest of us in the target zone. And it’s exhilarating to be caught out in such a brilliant shower of metaphors.” —Eleanor Wilner |
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“Ron Koertge is not only the wisest, most entertaining wiseguy in American poetry. He is also a conjurer, a designer of verbal holograms. Step inside any of these poems and you enter the precinct of a uniquely playful imagination..” —Billy Collins |
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“Lux may be one of the poets on whom the future depends. He has the stuff to win readres back from their unhappy places of exile..” —Sven Birkets |
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“Merwin has always been a contemplative poet, drawn to the lessons of the natural world and the rigors of unmediated vision. He has also been a romantic poet, heroic in his quest for the depths and intensities, the powers and possibilities of the consciousness. Best of all, he has been a surprising poet, continually slipping the bonds of anyone’s easy admiration.” —J. D. McClatchy |
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“Orr has chosen as his poetic ground the in-betweenness of things, that now closed and open ground between our surfaces (and depths) and those of others. . . The overlapping of images suggests a sense of ‘presences’ within and without. . . Orr enjoys the picture-making of the imagination and its autonomy, self-evidential even when appearing tamed.” —John Robert Leo |
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“In poem after poem, Diane Lockward brings to bear great shrewdness and great feeling. Always refusing the easy exit, she takes the full, surprising measure of every situation. Her work, even as it tackles the impure world of human conduct, is a pure delight. She reveals in the powers of language.” —Baron Wormser |
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“It takes genius to transcend the boring factionalism of U.S. poetry and that’s what Jeffrey McDaniel’s got: his affiliation is to the imagination. Fresh, provocataive, non-doctrinaire, his poems are the kind I want to grow up to write.” —Bill Knott |