Edward Hirsch Critical Essay | Critical Essay by J. D. Mcclatchy

Critical Essay by J. D. Mcclatchy

Hirsch comes to poetry as to a wind-up toy. He plays with it, turns it inside out, breaks and mends it, plays. Sometimes it ticks like Gertrude Stein…. Sometimes it spins on the axis of its own silliness…. [A] kind of slapstick abounds. When he can restrain himself, Hirsch is better. He prefers the expressionist portrait ("The Enigma: Rilke," or the sweet "Matisse") or a stew of dissolves and associations ("Cocks," "Reminiscence of Carousels and Civil War"). This poet has talent, but it is vitiated by a coy or dizzy self-indulgence: updated Dada. As a result, the poems [in For the Sleepwalkers] aren't memorable. But from scattered hints, from a colorful diction and a rhythmic surety, it may be predicted that he can—and will—write a more substantial book than this: one for the wide-awake.

J. D. McClatchy, in a review of "For the Sleepwalkers," in Poetry, Vol. CXL, No....
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