What Will Suffice: Contemporary American Poets on the Art of Poetry

by Christopher Buckley (Editor), Christopher Merrill (Editor)

A poem is a moral and mythic construct. Each decision the writer makes concerning the subject matter, form, diction, and tone reveals something about his or her vision of the world. Nowhere is that vision more on display than in an ars poetica, which is where a poet takes stock, writing down his or her articles of faith. An ars poetica is also a barometer for the cultural climate of one's times, and what the "readings" contained in this book suggest about post-Cold War America is that there are countless ways to interpret and transform our experiences. In the new world order the theater has changed yet the rise of ethnic conflict, neofascism, nationalism, and religious fundamentalism; the depletion of the earth's resources and devastation of innumberable ecosystems; continuing economic problems in both the developed and developing parts of the world; overpoplulation, the spread of AIDS and other communicable diseases;--these are dangers everyone faces. And poets are finding, in small ways and large, what will suffice for the next act. --Christopher Merrill

Genres: Poetry

200 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 1995

About the author

Christopher Buckley is a poet. For 2007-2008 he was a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry at the University of California Riverside.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[ryan wilkey · Rating 4 out of 5]

used this book in my poetry workshop back in college. (i need to pull this one out again and give some poems a reread.) there was one poem in particular that i remember being incredibly vivid and well-written, and for the life of me i can’t seem to remember the poet or title of the poem.

hmmm, where is that book on my shelf?