Warren Slesinger’s approach to poetry is experimental but skillful as well as entertaining.
American poetry
Book Review: “The Songs We Know Best” — The Youth of Poet John Ashbery
This book captures — beautifully — poet John Ashbery’s youth and dreams and struggles.
Film Review: “Paterson” — A Very Ordinary Visionary
Paterson is a movie about how ordinary it may be to see the world in a grain of sand.
Book Review: “The Hatred of Poetry” — Thinking the Worst About Verse
The Hatred of Poetry claims to explore our culture’s rampant animosity toward the entire art form.
Fuse Remembrance: Poet Philip Levine — A Voice of Muscle and Grit
Last Saturday, poet Philip Levine died at the age of 87 in Fresco, California. Here is a reprint of an Arts Fuse appreciation of the writer, originally posted in May of last year.
Arts Remembrance: Galway Kinnell — “The Cadence of Vanishing”
Galway Kinnell served as the Poet Laureate of Vermont and penned a number of poems, which often took the form of pastoral ramblings, that celebrated his appreciation of the rural life.
Fuse Poetry Review: Portrait of a Predicament
I wouldn’t be writing this review or asking you to read this book if I didn’t believe that McLane were up to something far more radical and also far more difficult to reckon with—something I am not even sure I can account for. The most significant quality of the poetry in “World Enough” is a profound and unapologetic ambiguity.
Fuse Poetry Commentary: Verse Into Verse — “Poetry” Awards Poetry a Prize
In the future, when a literary historian looks at the long-forgotten Lilly Prize and wonders what did its selection panels get right, it will be recognized that it had been sensitive and intelligent enough to realize the beauty of David Ferry’s poetry, an oeuvre which is sure to grow in stature. By Daniel Bosch. In […]
Poetry: On “Falling Back”— Six Poems Published in The New York Times Op-Ed Page
Was Sunday, November 7th some sort of equinox? Were there sunspots? Whatever the cause, six poems, to my delight and surprise, appeared in the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times as a feature called “Falling Back.” I’d like to take this opportunity to editorialize about these six poems, five of which were penned by […]
Film Review: Howl Me A River — Ginsberg on the Big Screen
Howl, the film version of the story behind the poem “Howl,” is defeated by its own messy pretensions, faring best when it reflects the unselfconscious spirit of the poet, veering into chaos when it tries to do more than pay homage to its namesake. Reviewed by Dylan Rose. Howl comes off as a mixed bag. […]