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lizawall's review against another edition
2.0
When I was 15 I started reading this in the bathtub and stayed in there until I got pruney and the water turned cold and then slowly drained out, and I really felt that she had the right idea about the anti-touch people and the anti-poetry people and how they ruin everything and the fear of poetry is the fear. The ideaology didn't hold up very well, and I hold that against this book, maybe unfairly.
abetterjulie's review against another edition
2.0
This started off strong and then petered out into incomprehensibility. I ended up skimming most of the last half. It feels like a series of unfinished and barely-clothed essays. I really wanted her to extend out her thoughts from the start about how the public distaste for poetry can be traced back to our unwillingness to confront difficult emotions like fear and grief. Or, I'd have loved a deeper look at her claim that art prepares us for thought.
I bought this book because I read about how much of an anti-war activist Rukeyser was, and I wanted to delve more into that through the lens of poetry. I wanted to see how much things had changed (or not) in our time compared to hers.
Anyway, that's not what I got. So, meh.
I bought this book because I read about how much of an anti-war activist Rukeyser was, and I wanted to delve more into that through the lens of poetry. I wanted to see how much things had changed (or not) in our time compared to hers.
Anyway, that's not what I got. So, meh.
hanvanderhart's review against another edition
5.0
Essential reading for poets and readers of poetry.
tinkerer's review against another edition
4.0
I really liked her discussion on what is underlying the general complaint of a person who says "I don't get/don't like poetry." I liked when she talked about society and the arts more than the poem-chapter on her childhood she wrote at the end. The last page has given me one of my favorite epigraphs.
margedalloway's review
3.0
Loved this rather strange book on the value of poetry. It's underlying premise is very similar to Roger Fry's approach to art in Vision & Design, examining the shape of art in tandem with the emotional response it produces in us. It is itself a kind of poetry, which makes it surprisingly easy to read, relying on a system of interweaving language to convey its point, rather than on a more robust academic approach. This does have its downsides, however, every now and then the point becomes slightly to vague and blurry to be fully realised and you are left to squint at whatever point is being made in the far off horizon, never quite making it out. Worse yet are Rukeyser's attempts to apply psychoanalysis to art, attempting to use her rather flimsy understanding of psychology to attach some very fibrous threads linking it to poetry; it is the least convincing part of the entire book. In spite of these faults, it is, for the most part, a lucid and engaging book that encourages the "total response" that Rukeyser attributes to poetry.
gagne's review
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
if one can relax, stepping back to view the greater image of the poet, one may begin to become a poet
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