In the following essay, Howard surveys and praises Wagoner's works, emphasizing in the development in his novels and poetry a poetic intelligence that wrests a sense of positive identity from a...
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In the following review, Boyers praises Wagoner's poetry for its acrobatic ability to sustain balance as it chronicles the nature of living as continuous movement.
David Wagoner seems to me ...
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In the following essay, Hughes praises Wagoner's ability to convey the landscape and the processes of individual consciousness through the metaphorical use of natural phenomena.
In Riverbed,...
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In the following essay, Lieberman traces Wagoner's development of a “language of sensory response,” by which means the poet can describe his encounter with and transcendence of th...
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In the following review of the Collected Poems, 1956–1976, Oberg concludes Wagoner is a major poet.
David Wagoner's Collected Poems brings together selections from two decades of writ...
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In the following review, Hall distinguishes between the rare poetry of “true invention” and the much more common, but respectable, poetry “of the second intensity,” and pra...
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In the following excerpt, Flint celebrates Wagoner's nature/wilderness poetry.
No sooner had Frost died than the Great West from Chicago to Seattle, Calgary to Santa Fe, was suddenly taken t...
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In the following essay, Ramsey commends Wagoner's reworking of Native-American myths in Who Shall Be the Sun?.
There is so much to admire in this book, that it may seem perverse to begin its...
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In the following essay, despite his appreciation of Wagoner's poetic virtues, Peters sees him as a safe, nonadventurous poet with comfortable middle-class, middle-age sensibilities.
The Blac...
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In the following review, Ratiner praises Wagoner's Landfall for its “precise, luminous diction,” unpretentious style, and friendly voice, but regrets what he sees as frequent verb...
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In the following essay, Askins discusses the difficulty facing poets who still write poetry of nature, and argues that although Wagoner succeeds as a nature poet, his poems lack outstanding and memora...
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In the following essay, McAulay traces Wagoner's journey in nature, and the primordial struggle with self it demands, which constitutes the subject matter of much of Wagoner's poetry.
...
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In the following essay, McFarland surveys Wagoner's early poetry, and traces the development of his themes, technique, voice, and poetic identity.
The year 1953 saw the publication of Theodo...
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In the following essay, Taylor praises Wagoner for writing poetry that simultaneously celebrates self-transcendence and the “ontological durability” of certain “essential emotions...
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Critical Essay by Richard Howard
