The Virtues of Poetry

by James Longenbach

An illuminating look at the many forms of poetry's 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 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 poetry's virtues abound, and only our devotion to a long history of excellence allows us to recognize them." –from James Longenbach's prefaceThe 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 art's lasting virtues.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Essays, Criticism, Writing

157 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 5, 2013

About the author

James Longenbach is a poet and critic whose work is often featured in publications such as The New Yorker, Paris Review, and Slate. He lives in Rochester, New York.

Reviews

[Natalie Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book for anyone who wants to read poetry a little bit more intelligently and emotionally. It is not written for academics. Longenbach uses excellent examples which he explicates intelligently, amusingly, and with great insight.

Longenbach is an accomplished poet himself and this book reveals his acumen and perspicacity. I highly recommend it, and I also recommend his poetry.

[John Fredrickson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an excellent discussion a variety of poets, and covers some of the choices and strategies that these poets have used to attain the effects they desired. The poetic devices that are covered include meter, shifting use of tense, the stance that a poet takes, and other techniques as well.

Each fairly short chapter is thematic, and addresses at least one poet, but more often uses several poets, each contrasted with another whose differing (or similar) style is illustrative of the chapter's theme. Lowell and Bishop are discussed together for a variety of reasons. Longenbach also explains the context in which the poets are operating, as they often had an agenda in their work - Pound's Cantos are a case in point.

I struggled with some of the material in this book. I suspect that there is just no way to read a poet like Marvell, Donne, or Dickinson (all discussed in the book) without putting forth some serious effort. Whether the poems use "muscular syntax" or just reference their material in very oblique ways, some of the poetry included here is difficult. Nonetheless, the book does an excellent job of discussing the poems, poets, and their technique in a clear and interesting way.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

To my mind Longenach is one of our best critics of (at least some) contemporary poetry. Some readers might think the book presents itself as academic criticism, but then falls short. I think that is the wrong expectation. Longenbach assumes that he is appealing to readers of poetry, and, perhaps naively (in the best way), assumes that they are still out there. There are good and helpful readings of Shakespeare, Yeats, Eliot, Dickinson and others, as well as some contemporaries -- Gluck, Rich, Ashbery, and others. Through it all, he delineates the different ways poems can work to reveal the startling and mysterious in the everyday, the mundane.

There would be lots of things to quote here, but here is one short comment after Longenbach's discussion of a Dickinson poem -- "To feel at home in the world is to have eradicated the desire for infinitude. To depend on the night sky to kindle that desire is ultimately to squelch it."

[Brian Wasserman · Rating 2 out of 5]

some good thoughts on select authors. Longenbach is not a good essayist, abstract, awful lexical choices, dwells in his own thoughts so much that it is unlikely to promote interest in the reader to continue reading. Its no surprise that in the chapter bad writing he uses beethoven's opus 110 and l'avventura as example of misguided art, but it is certainly bad writing and bad argumentation to use examples that arent poems, and are less likely to be known offhand by the reader.

[Arwen S · Rating 1 out of 5]

I truly wanted to enjoy this book, and I am someone who considers themselves an individual who enjoys a more intellectual look at the symbolic meanings used in poetry, but I could not get past the feeling that this book was primarily written by an individual who does not connect with poetry on a soul level. It comes across as cold and, well, rigid and without feeling.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel like I understood just enough of this to make it worth reading. And it was.

[Olivia Case · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was poetry.
For they it is.

[Gordon Hultberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy this book and will repeatedly turn to it as a high school English teacher as a reminder of how to speak elegantly and imaginatively about poems. Longenbach selects lovely examples from a wide range of poetry, speaking of each succinctly, focusing on one or two helpful keys that open up each poem and let it breathe, so that we can see a facet otherwise unnoticed. I used his style as a model recently in several classes for how to write insightfully about poetry.
What we need is a resurgence of appreciation for the poem, for the pure enjoyment lyric poetry offers. This book celebrates the enjoyment of poetry, and informs me to see as a poet sees. If presses like GrayWolf keep publishing poetry as well as books that support its enjoyment, may they continue to thrive.

[Jessica Furtado · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as part of the Goodreads First Reads program. While I expected a book that would superficially defend the beauty and complexity of poetry, this text turned out to be an in-depth piece of scholarship. Logenbach both imaginatively and critically examines the works of canonical writers such as Eliot, Dickinson, Pound, and others, revealing to readers not only how poets execute their works with deliberateness and precision, but also why they choose to do so. Poetry scholars will revel in Logenbach's enthusiastic assessments and observations regarding a handful of the most brilliant minds that have worked in this craft.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collections offered many essays that were surprisingly deep given their brevity. I especially enjoyed his look at restraint and excess in some poems by Whitman and Dickinson, the discussion of reticence/confession in Bishop and Lowell, and some great stuff about King Lear and how fine poems embody the process of the self in the act of discovery. It made me want to reread Wallace Stevens, as well. Thoughtful, careful use of close reading within historical and cultural context. I really enjoy Longenbach's prose style; this was just as much a pleasure to read as his study of line-ends in Greywolf's _The Art of_ series.

[World Literature Today]

"Like a man who takes clocks apart for the sheer joy of showing us the marvelous ways in which they work, James Longenbach displays a great talent for insightful close reading, a process through which he reveals the inner workings of a poem in ways that augment rather than diminish our wonder in reading it." - Benjamin Myers, Oklahoma Baptist University

This book was reviewed in the May 2013 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our site: http://bit.ly/10GhQdS

[False · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't take away much from this book. I am in accord with much that he says, especially of seeking the mystery in the mundane, which I tend to do. I did like the quote he used at the beginning of the book:

"The source of poetry is always a mystery, an inspiration, a charged perplexity in the face of the irrational--unknown territory. But the act of poetry--if one may make a distinction here, separating the flame from the fuel--is an absolute determination to see clearly, to reduce to reason, to know. ~~Cesare Pavese

[Ashlei A.K.A Chyna Doll · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book of inspiring levels
I'm not a poetic person but I am glad to have read this

The Virtues of Poetry

[John Orman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of those virtues are boldness, doubt, excess, intimacy, and surprise. All that and more is explained in this small book of explanatory text and poetic examples.

The act of poetry creation is said to be seeing clearly and to know.

[Tom Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely long view of the thinking-through poems make

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, affirming book. I will return to it over and over.

[Mills College Library]

808.1 L852 2013

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some easy-to-digest poetry criticism. Longenback offers an insightful reading of a number of modern poems following his guide to the different virtues contained in poetry.

[Yasmin Zaini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some refrences are hard to follow, so this book isn't really for everyone.