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Poems
Volume 57 of the Yale series of Younger Poets
- GenresPoetry
62 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1961
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 3, 2020
If you haven't read Alan Dugan, you haven't read American poetry. You have missed something wonderful. I go back far enough to have read this collection (in The Yale Series of Younger Poets) when it first came out. I don't think I have ever been so in awe of work by a new writer. Yes, new, even though Dugan was in 1961, aged 36 - which raised some questions about what Younger Poets meant. I don't have a copy handy and so am probably going to be inaccurate here, but I still shake my head at the sweep of The wind came in for thousands of miles all night last nigh. It straighten the close lie of your hair this morning.
October 4, 2021
3.5
His work has been called predictable. I tend to agree. He was a good poet. I like his work. But honestly, I'm not sure how this one earned so much praise. It's going to take a long time—probably years—to work my way back through his oeuvre. For the first time in many years I read a few poems from this one, but then I put it away for more than a year before coming back to finish it. It may be a year or more before I even start on Poems Two.
Here's a snippet from Poetry Foundation:
Dugan’s predictable style and subject matter have led some to accuse him of stagnation. “The sameness of Dugan’s poems suggests someone who is concerned not to seek variety or development, and continue working the same weirdly attractive yet essentially limited vein,” Alan Brownjohn remarked. Taking the opposite tack, Robert Boyers argued that Dugan’s limited range is a virtue: “By cultivating what is by any standard a confining style, and by exercising his caustic intelligence on a relatively narrow range of subjects, Dugan has created a significant body of work that speaks with authority to a variety of modern readers. One does not get terribly excited about Alan Dugan’s work, but one nevertheless returns to it with increasing regularity, for it successfully inhabits that middle ground of experience which our best poets today seem loathe to admit.”
His work has been called predictable. I tend to agree. He was a good poet. I like his work. But honestly, I'm not sure how this one earned so much praise. It's going to take a long time—probably years—to work my way back through his oeuvre. For the first time in many years I read a few poems from this one, but then I put it away for more than a year before coming back to finish it. It may be a year or more before I even start on Poems Two.
Here's a snippet from Poetry Foundation:
Dugan’s predictable style and subject matter have led some to accuse him of stagnation. “The sameness of Dugan’s poems suggests someone who is concerned not to seek variety or development, and continue working the same weirdly attractive yet essentially limited vein,” Alan Brownjohn remarked. Taking the opposite tack, Robert Boyers argued that Dugan’s limited range is a virtue: “By cultivating what is by any standard a confining style, and by exercising his caustic intelligence on a relatively narrow range of subjects, Dugan has created a significant body of work that speaks with authority to a variety of modern readers. One does not get terribly excited about Alan Dugan’s work, but one nevertheless returns to it with increasing regularity, for it successfully inhabits that middle ground of experience which our best poets today seem loathe to admit.”
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews