SOURCE: Satterfield, Jane. Review of The Father of the Predicaments, by Heather McHugh. The Antioch Review 58, no. 2 (spring 2000): 247.

In the following favorable review of The Father of the Predicaments, Satterfield argues that “in this welcome fourth compilation, incidents of dramatic and seemingly random stature implode to reveal surprising insights.”

“I have a secret theory,” said Heather McHugh, speaking of Ezra Pound's “The Lake Isle” to fellow poets in a recent Harper's Forum on poetry, “that most poets, at one time or another, write into their poems their own self-criticism.” Much of what McHugh finds worthy in this fractious forebear, “high reference and low irreverence” (for McHugh the “great conjunction” in Pound), is apparent also in her verse. Poetry as secret theory, poetry as self-criticism, poetry as linguistic feast—all are central to McHugh's most recent collection [The Father of the Predicaments]. In this welcome fourth compilation, incidents of...