Creative Glut: Selected Essays - Softcover

A lively and slashing critic...reading him one feels windows opening, clouds passing, sunlight, and a fresh breeze entering the room. -- Joseph Epstein His essays-the most characteristic ones can be found in [this] useful new volume... * New Republic * Karl Shapiro's provocative views of American poetry and culture were well ahead of their time, and decades on his barbs have not lost their sting.... Unlike most literary and social criticism, Shapiro's candid commentaries have aged remarkably well, and continue to instruct and delight. It is very good indeed, in this age of largely unreadable esoteric theorizing and mediocre reviewing, to have these pungent, thought-provoking essays available again. -- Joseph Parisi, former editor of Poetry Recommended for larger academic collections, especially those that do not own the original collections. * Library Journal * Shapiro's words offer a provacative assessment of writers now enshrined in the university canon. Shapiro's well-cut prose sparkles on the page and his vigorous opinions make these literary essays exceptionally entertaining. * Publishers Weekly * A most welcomed tribute. * The Dallas Morning News * The essays are always readable, full of funny asides, and can even make prosody interesting. * Times Literary Supplement *

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (the position later to be known as "poet laureate"), editor of Poetry magazine-Karl Shapiro was among the commanding poets of the second half of the twentieth century, yet in many circles he is scarcely remembered today. A recent revival of interest in Shapiro has occurred with the Library of America's volume of his poems, edited by John Updike. Now, in this sparkling collection edited by Robert Phillips, Shapiro's most trenchant writings on poetry, poets, and cultural matters are once again available. They display the intelligence, power, and intellectual courage that made Shapiro one of the most important essayists of his generation. He was "a lively and slashing critic," Joseph Epstein has written, "and reading him one feels windows opening, clouds passing, sunlight, and a fresh breeze entering the room." Creative Glut contains twenty essays on such poets and writers as Eliot, Pound, Yeats, Auden, William Carlos Williams, Dylan Thomas, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Randall Jarrell, and on questions of poetry and American culture that Shapiro felt as urgent, including his celebrated pieces "In Defense of Ignorance" and "To Abolish Children." In all, this is a savory slice of some of the most challenging criticism of our late century.