[Tess Gallagher's poems in Under Stars are] personal lyrics, done with a verbal finesse rare to find these days in the common American free-form convention. I am tempted to call it feminine. And I do, risking the era's awkward consequences, because there is after all a womanly sensibility in literature, thank heaven, and we can recognize it. Moreover, Gallagher's poems, beyond their delicacy of language, have a delicacy of perception that I, at any rate, associate with women; the capacity to see oneself objectively as another person doing the things one really does, but without the hard philosophical intrusions most men resort to; instead with clear affection and natural concern. If Jane Austen, in creating her characterizations, was often writing about herself, then Tess Gallagher, in writing about herself, is often creating characterizations, i.e., fictions, people existing in words, whom she cannot know, yet whom she regards with wonder and sometimes with Sapphic pathos. Delicacy and light and the feminine strength of a clear view—these are the qualities that give me much pleasure in Gallagher's work and awaken in me much sympathy…. (p. 89)
Hayden Carruth, "Impetus and Invention," in Harper's (copyright © 1979 by Harper's Magazine; all rights reserved; reprinted from the May, 1979 issue by special permission), Vol. 258, No. 1548, May, 1979, pp. 88-90.∗
This is a free excerpt of 217 words. There are 221 words (approx.
1 page at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Gallagher, Tess 1944–: Critical Essay by Hayden Carruth Access Pass.
