What Persists: Selected Essays on Poetry from The Georgia Review, 1988-2014

by Judith Kitchen

Overview

What Persists contains eighteen of the nearly fifty essays on poetry that Judith Kitchen published in The Georgia Review over a twenty-five-year span. Coming at the genre from every possible angle, this celebrated critic discusses work by older and younger poets, most American but some foreign, and many of whom were not yet part of the contemporary canon. Her essays reveal a cultural history from the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, through 9/11 and the Iraq War, and move into today’s political climate. They chronicle personal interests while they also make note of what was happening in contemporary poetry by revealing overall changes of taste, both in content and in the use of craft. Over time, they fashion a comprehensive overview of the contemporary literary scene.


At its best, What Persists shows what a wide range of poetry is being written—by women, men, poets who celebrate their ethnicity, poets who show a fierce individualism, poets whose careers have soared, promising poets whose work has all but disappeared.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820354804
Publisher:	University of Georgia Press
Publication date:	10/15/2018
Series:	Georgia Review Books Series
Pages:	376
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

JUDITH KITCHEN was the author of many books, including Perennials, Writing the World: Understanding William Stafford, The House on Eccles Street, Only the Dance, and The Circus Train. She also edited or coedited four collections of nonfiction: In Short, In Brief, Short Takes, and The Poets Guide to the Birds. Her awards include two Pushcart Prizes for her essays, the Lillian Fairchild Award for her novel, the Anhinga Prize for poetry, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She died in 2014.

JUDITH KITCHEN was the author of many books, including Perennials, Writing the World: Understanding William Stafford, The House on Eccles Street, Only the Dance, and The Circus Train. She also edited or coedited four collections of nonfiction: In Short, In Brief, Short Takes, and The Poets Guide to the Birds. Her awards include two Pushcart Prizes for her essays, the Lillian Fairchild Award for her novel, the Anhinga Prize for poetry, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She died in 2014.

Table of Contents

Foreword Stephen Corey ix

Author's Preface xi

Summer 1988: "Speaking Passions" On William Stafford Heather McHugh Linda Pastan Brigit Pegeen Kelly Li-Young Lee 1

Spring 1991: "Auditory Imagination: The Sense of Sound" On Pamela Gross Jane Kenyon Li- Young Lee Thomas Lux Wayne Dodd 19

Spring 1992: "Excellent Excesses" On Stanley Plumly William Matthews Pamela Stewart Albert Goldbarth Les Murray 37

Fall 1993: "Skating on Paper" On G. K. Williams W. S. Merwin Judith Hall Deborah Pope Gerald McCarthy 56

Summer 1996: "The Ladybug and the Universe" On Stanley Kunitz Donald Justice Gerald Stern Michael Harper 76

Summer 1997: "What Persists" On Charles Wright Robert Hass Maxine Kumin Paul Zimmer Lisel Mueller Leslie Norris 96

Winter 1998: "Against" On Mary Karr Billy Collins Thylias Moss Ted Hughes 123

Summer 1999: "Tensions," On George Szirtes Paul Muldoon Albert Goldbarth Suzanne Paola Naomi Shihab Nye 143

Winter 2000: "In Pursuit of Elegance" On Les Murray Yehuda Amichai Derek Walcott Jane Cooper Robert Wrigley James Richardson Gregory Djanikian Stephen Dunn 161

Winter 2002: "Interlude" On Madeline DeFrees Linda Gregerson Li-Young Lee Philip Schultz Natasha Trethewey 180

Fall 2005: "The Fact of the Room" On Albert Goldbarth Quan Barry Joseph Stroud Ann Townsend Kevin Prufer Linda Bierds 197

Fall 2007: "Raindrops on Roses…" On Albert Goldbarth Carl Phillips Robert Wrigley Rebecca McClanahan Bruce Beasley Paul Zimmer John Engels 218

Spring 2008: "The Omnivorous Omnibus" On Michael O'Brien Meghan O'Rourke Robert Hass Philip Schultz Stanley Plumly 243

Fall 2010: "Puzzles" On Tony Hoagland Terrance Hays Connie Wanek Peggy Shumaker 260

Summer 2011: "Walking the Line" On James Richardson Robert Wrigley Elizabeth Bradfield Robert Cording 275

Summer 2012: "A Question Takes" On Marvin Bell Jane Hirshfield Kevin Prufer Kevin Goodan 292

Winter 2012: "With a Little Help from My Friends" On Natasha Trethewey Kathleen Flenniken John Hodgen Alice Deny Lola Haskins 311

Winter 2014: "Da Capo al Coda" On Michael Mlekoday Kerrin McCadden David Koehn Laura Donnelly Kasey Jueds 335

Appendix: Notes on the Other Twenty-Eight Essays 353

Editorial Reviews

I hope others will immerse themselves in this book and be as moved, amazed, touched, and enlightened as I felt when I read and now reread her marvelous sentences, her deep understanding of poetry, her remarkable ability to absorb it all and make sense of it for her readers.

Hollins Critic - Kelly Cherry

As assembled here these writings become a brilliant tour of the last twenty-five years of American poetry, not systematic, orderly, or complete, but strikingly capacious and wide ranging. Kitchen is an extraordinary guide to these writers and texts, both the famous and the less familiar. What Persists is both a significant contribution to American poetry criticism and a lasting tribute to one of our best recent critics.

author of Somewhere near Defiance - Jeff Gundy

Judith Kitchen refused to suffer the trendy, the power-mongered, the almost-poem, and the cant (and simply the can’t) that permeate the poetry world. Of her own criticism she said at one point, 'Does this make me sound like [a] curmudgeon? Partly . . . but it also makes me . . . the reader in search of something subtle, even magical.' For twenty-six years—for a generation—Judith introduced us to, and defended, and parsed, that magic, teaching us to see it for ourselves and holding its practitioners to the highest standards. Her essays are supple, richly textured (and often movingly autobiographical) prose; her critical heart is equally generous and demanding; her mind is quirky, opinionated, candid, and honeycombed with the love and lore of the art she chose to showcase. Seemingly without trying (but of course that was part of her magic) she became my generation’s most eloquent and necessary exponent of American poetry.

Albert Goldbarth

Gravity’s Rainbow, Domination and Freedom is a seminal study of Pynchon’s most influential text, which not only situates the novel in the wider cultural milieu of its time of production and hereby elucidates its narrative and political subtexts, but it also helps Pynchon novices to navigate this moloch—one can indeed feel the authors’ longtime experience with teaching the novel and therefore not ending up in constructing a narrow cave that only allows experts in.

Amerikastudien/American Studies - Sebastian Huber

Compact as crystal, this book touches and changes its reader and will prove a shining milestone to future poets, scholars, and readers seeking the light of poetry itself.

author of Landscape and Images - John R. Stilgoe