Sapphics Against Anger and Other Poems

by Timothy Steele

"Anyone who wants to know the best in contemporary poetry can't do better than start with Timothy Steele. Among those younger American poets still working in time-tested forms, he stands clearly preeminent. For all their technical brilliance, now so rare, these poems don't merely show off; they say intelligent things triumphantly, in words that look dug in to endure." -X.J. Kennedy

"Timothy Steele seems to me one of the very best young poets now writing. He has an easy, unforced mastery of form...[and] that truth and warmth of feeling which is sometimes denied to the formalist; and he has an exceptional range of theme and tone, encompassing the homely and the sophisticated." -Richard Wilbur

"Timothy Steele's poems are energetic at all points, and solid without being heavy. I can't think of any poet active in this country who writes stanzaic poetry so well. He speaks to me as a contemporary, and I never feel he has chosen to do so in meter for any other reason than that by doing to he can make his speech more forceful." -Thom Gunn

Genres: Poetry

66 pages, Paperback

First published August 12, 1986

Reviews

[PEN Center USA · Rating 5 out of 5]

1987 PEN Center USA Award Winner for Poetry

[Vasha7 · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first reaction, of course, was to exclaim, "Wow, meter and rhyme!" Is this the case of the talking dog, where it's so remarkable that he does it, that we shouldn't ask how well? No, I'd say that Steele's choice of these forms is a challenge rather than an artifice; and though I inevitably associate them with light verse, and light indeed some of these poems are, Steele's serious side comes through too.

He covers a range of subjects: childhood memories; interior musings sparked by an everyday moment or a piece of art; streetscapes of Los Angeles; a couple of love poems.

If this volume was all at the level of its five or six best (not great but good) poems -- "Sapphics Against Anger", "Angel", "Last Tango", "But Home Is Here", "The Chorus", a few others -- I would keep it; as it is, I don't think it worth re-reading.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 S8145s 1986