Thomas Parkinson, Poets, Poems, Movements; Wolfgang Zach and Heinz Kosok (eds), Literary Interrelations; Ireland, England and the World

Abstract

There is a good deal of pleasure, not to mention amusement, to be found among the reviews, essays, and occasional pieces collected together in Poets, Poems, Movements. The more serious undertakings of the earlier sections are indeed exemplary in their own way, but the critical voice mellows considerably in the second half of the volume; it certainly becomes more ardently personal, often quirky, decidedly Californian, and at moments rises to the magisterial. The book begins with an essay which “examines the nature and burden of the poet, moving from loneliness to community through the medium and magic of poetic art, and in the process destroying the loneliness of the reader, bringing him into a more full and rewarding knowledge of being”. Parkinson’s conception of the human condition may not coincide with that of every reader, but his considered opinion certainly does provide a context against which to read the criticism that follows.