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Winter Channels
Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
About the author
James Schevill
40 booksJames Erwin Schevill was an American poet, critic, playwright and professor at San Francisco State University and Brown University, and the recipient of Guggenheim and Ford Foundation fellowships. He wrote more than 10 volumes of poetry, 30 plays, many essays, a novel, and biographies of Bern Porter and Sherwood Anderson. His plays include Lovecraft's Follies (1971) based on the life and work of Providence horror writer H.P. Lovecraft.
He was visiting Freiburg, Germany in 1938 when the Kristallnacht riots occurred, and the experience led him into writing and poetry.
In a 1950 letter to Robert Sproul, the president of the University of California, he refused to sign a loyalty oath, at the time a prerequisite to becoming an instructor at the UC Berkeley. Instead he went on to teach at California College of Arts and Crafts and San Francisco State University. In 1981 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama and Performance Art. He died in Berkeley, California in January 2009.
He was visiting Freiburg, Germany in 1938 when the Kristallnacht riots occurred, and the experience led him into writing and poetry.
In a 1950 letter to Robert Sproul, the president of the University of California, he refused to sign a loyalty oath, at the time a prerequisite to becoming an instructor at the UC Berkeley. Instead he went on to teach at California College of Arts and Crafts and San Francisco State University. In 1981 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama and Performance Art. He died in Berkeley, California in January 2009.
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September 27, 2012I don't think I can rate poetry collections. How I feel about poetry rarely is as simple as a 'like' or 'dislike', and I'm not confident enough to decide whether it's 'good' or 'bad'. Poetry can break far more rules than prose can, in my experience.
I did like the conceit of this collection, though: it's a series taken directly from a journal over the winter of 1988 (IIRC), one poem per day. All of them were readable, and made sense to read. I find myself wondering how much they were crafted after the fact, or are straight off the cuff (which would be extremely impressive—there were plenty I don't think were all that great technically, but without any editing at all, would be far stronger).
Many tended to the abstract, but those that stayed with the concrete situations, images were powerful. I even found parts I'd be willing to quote (there are collections that don't even give me that).
Overall, a worthwhile collection
I did like the conceit of this collection, though: it's a series taken directly from a journal over the winter of 1988 (IIRC), one poem per day. All of them were readable, and made sense to read. I find myself wondering how much they were crafted after the fact, or are straight off the cuff (which would be extremely impressive—there were plenty I don't think were all that great technically, but without any editing at all, would be far stronger).
Many tended to the abstract, but those that stayed with the concrete situations, images were powerful. I even found parts I'd be willing to quote (there are collections that don't even give me that).
Overall, a worthwhile collection
Displaying 1 of 1 review