Karl Shapiro Summary

In an essay first published in The Writer's Experience (1964) Karl Shapiro recalled a woman who came up to him just before a lecture he was about to give on anarchism and said crisply: "I don't belie... Read more

In the following favorable review of Person, Place, and Thing, Schwartz determines the influence of W. H. Auden on Shapiro's poetry. Karl Jay Shapiro is a poet of remarkable and original gifts.... Read more

In the following stylistic analysis of The Bourgeois Poet, Rubin derides the design of The Bourgeois Poet, maintaining that the only unifying element is the force of the poet's personality, whi... Read more

In the following essay, Malkoff places Poems of a Jew within the context of Shapiro's other poetic works. "These poems are not for poets," Karl Shapiro begins his Introduction to ... Read more

In the following essay, Reino provides a stylistic and thematic analysis of The Bourgeois Poet. Several years prior to the appearance of "Dome of Sunday" in the generally well-received P... Read more

In the following review, Saverse provides a negative assessment of the poems comprising The Old Horsefly. In an essay on Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold writes, "Wordsworth was a homely man, and him... Read more

In the following review, Dupee offers a mixed assessment of V-Letter and Other Poems By now most readers are probably tired of war literature and would like to get back to literature. Not only is much... Read more

In the following essay, Kohler challenges Shapiro's reputation as a war poet, maintaining his work has a larger appeal. The poet in uniform is at a disadvantage today. There is, first, the comm... Read more

In the following essay, Spender provides a mixed review of Trial of a Poet. This is Mr. Shapiro's fourth volume of published poetry, and in common with his previous volume, Essay on Rime, it sh... Read more

In the following essay, originally published in 1946, Williams offers a positive assessment of Essay on Rime. (Editor's Note: William Carlos Williams is treated by Shapiro as an "objecti... Read more

Critical Essay by Conrad Aiken I think it can be said that poetry resembles the dream in at least one very important sense: the latent content, or meaning, is not necessarily identical with the manife... Read more

Critical Essay by Michael True I have not heard a younger poet speak with any real respect for Karl Shapiro in some time—in spite of his life-long devotion to craft, his intelligence, his achie... Read more

Critical Essay by Jascha Kessler I think [Collected Poems: 1940–1978] will prove to be poetry that will last awhile, a lifetime's work that will be a monument to a certain tradition in w... Read more