The Undiscovered Country

For more than a quarter century, William Logan's witty, bare-knuckled reviews have rocked the pages of the New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, the New Criterion, and numerous other journals. Vanity Fair's James Wolcott has called Logan the "best poetry critic in America," a reviewer who vividly assays the most memorable and damning features of a poet's work.The Undiscovered Country measures the critical and textual traditions...
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For more than a quarter century, William Logan's witty, bare-knuckled reviews have rocked the pages of the New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, the New Criterion, and numerous other journals. Vanity Fair's James Wolcott has called Logan the "best poetry critic in America," a reviewer who vividly assays the most memorable and damning features of a poet's work.The Undiscovered Country measures the critical and textual traditions of Shakespeare's sonnets, Whitman's use of the American vernacular, and the mystery of Marianne Moore. The collection includes a thorough reconsideration of Robert Lowell and a groundbreaking analysis of Sylvia Plath's relationship to her father. Logan's unsparing "verse chronicles" survey the successes and failures of contemporary verse. While railing against the blandness of much of today's poetry (and the critics who champion mediocre work), Logan also celebrates Paul Muldoon's high comedy, Anne Carson's quirky originality, Seamus Heaney's backward glances, and Czeslaw Milosz's indictment of Polish poetry.