Document Type
Review
Abstract
[First paragraph]
So many volumes of poetry published, so many with the title of a poem becoming the title of the book. It is refreshing then, to see one (not the only one, but the one I happen to be discussing) whose title poem is actually an essay, a manifesto of sorts, a statement of poetics. I say this out not out of a disdain for poetry as nonserious discourse but in response to mainstream poetry’s seemingly tireless ability to render itself irrelevant by claiming the aesthetic as its only territory, by its refusal be anything but a toy of the bourgeoisie. I’m looking at you New Yorker! At least Coleridge claimed the lime-tree bower as his prison—so many contemporary poets claim it for their Xanadu.
Repository Citation
Clinton, Alan. "Review of An Alchemist With One Eye on Fire, by Clayton Eshleman." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 9, no. 2, 2009, pp. 1–2. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol9/iss2/17