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Critical Essay by Calvin Bedient
Tate has been visible as a poet so long … that one is dismayed to find him still stuck in adolescence [with the poems in Riven Doggeries]. The silliness, defiance of "authority," high spirits, blurted obscenities, and puerile cleverness of his poetry are perhaps confused, by some, with spunky American originality….
What might save Tate for poetry? Perhaps doses of Indian poems …, for at moments Tate already writes in their happy animistic spirit…. But unlike, say, the Swampy Cree with their ancient imaginative culture, Tate has only his manically riven wits to sustain him, and the path he has chosen—his will-never-say-Uncle manner—cannot be easy to go down alone, especially if one is skipping with a vengeance. In any event the one thing Tate needs to take seriously is the triviality of mere nose-thumbing at seriousness. (pp. 484-85)
Calvin Bedient, "New Confessions," in The Sewanee Review (reprinted by permission...
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This section contains 171 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page) |
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