About Jan Schreiber

When I tell people I teach and – God help me – even write poetry, they often say, “I wish you could explain modern poetry to me.… continue reading... “Stalking the Typical Poem”

Last July, a distinguished group of poets who are also critics gathered at Western State College of Colorado, in Gunnison, for the Second Annual Symposium on Poetry Criticism.… continue reading... “Preface: Second Annual Symposium on Poetry Criticism”

When I was seventeen years old and barely aware of poetry, with no idea what good poetry might be, or even what if anything might please me, a friend, just back from his English class, rushed breathlessly into my room at boarding school, book in hand, and cried, “Listen to this!”

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level | underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing .

Reviewed:  Rain by Don Paterson. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009. 61 pages.

What we most love we must lose. That implacable fact of human existence is the ground bass of Don Paterson’s excellent book Rain.… continue reading... “Don Paterson’s Improbable Distances”

“Building my work, I build myself.”

–  Paul Valéry

“Thought tends to collect in pools.”

– Wallace Stevens

Ordinary readers, literary editors, and some English professors confront an inescapable question of judgment: In principle, is it possible, faced with an overwhelming body of work in print, to cull out excellent poems in the way one can cull out fine diamonds or superb soufflés?… continue reading... “Poetry and the Problem of Standards”

The six papers which will appear this week in the CPR were all delivered on July 31, 2010, at the first annual Western State College Seminar on Poetry Criticism, in Gunnison, Colorado. … continue reading... “Special Issue Introduction: Poetry Criticism”

Chinese Apples: New and Selected Poems by W. S. Di Piero. Knopf, 2007. 247 pp.

As Reviewed By: Jan Schreiber

A hardy strain of poets in America feels that the craft of poetry is often too crafty, that the verse line need be nothing more than a space in which to say something striking, and that elevated diction will cut the poet off from his readers, who are in fact his peers.… continue reading... “In the Details”

Blank Verse: A Guide to Its History and Use by Robert B. Shaw. Ohio University Press, 2007. 305 pages.

As Reviewed By: Jan Schreiber

A bright woman of my acquaintance, educated in a field far from literature, recently asked me what poetry anthology I would recommend to help her become better acquainted with contemporary writing.… continue reading... “What has Five Feet and Lives Forever?”

Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems by W.D. Snodgrass. BOA Editions, 2006.

As Reviewed By: Jan Schreiber

Have you boned up on your Snodgrass? There’s no time like the present.… continue reading... “Unguided and Apart: the Achievement of W.D.”

Jack and Other New Poems by Maxine Kumin. Norton, 2005.

There is a kind of poem that tastemakers and status jockeys tend to ignore: one neither difficult (because highly figurative, allusive, multilayered) nor terse and formal (with every syllable required to justify itself).… continue reading... “Farther South Than This”