A review by margedalloway
The Life of Poetry by Muriel Rukeyser, Jane Cooper

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.