"“In the Polish language, if you say ‘it’s history,’ that means it’s very important, the opposite of what it means in English. In the late Eighties, poets began saying, ‘I don’t care about history. I want to write about smoking cigarettes or drinking vodka.’ Adam is ‘in history.’” Illg cites Zagajewski’s recurring references to classical music and Old Masters paintings as contributing factors to the negative reaction." Arthur Lubow on Adam Zagajewski • Threepenny Review

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"By now his readers know the Foust MO: short-short poems, mash-ups of two kinds of knowingness (literary and musical) set against a contemporary exurban landscape suffused with loneliness, violence and erotic need, and never enough money. The borrowings are almost beside the point; Foust doesn't so much appropriate sources as embed his poems in the cultural subsoil that nourished him." Ange Mlinko on Graham Foust • The Nation

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"It may seem odd to compare Simko to the Irish poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin — the two have nothing obvious in common — but reading these two poets offers a similar experience: a feeling that the poet is trying to communicate some urgent information, in a code to which I have no access but to which I find myself returning compulsively." Ailbhe Darcy on Daniel Simko • Critical Flame

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"Twisting syntax and the abusing grammar are a poet's prerogative, but these techniques are also always a game of roulette: the lines may clunk through such contrivance, or the wonder of novelty fade." Jacob A Bennett on Joan Houlihan • Critical Flame

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"What mattered, more than formal skill, more than clever effects or knowingness, more even than the all too frequently sociological "meaning" of the work, was how keenly and completely a poet reimagined language and the world" John Burnside on Ted Hughes • The Guardian

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"Add to this his remark in a letter to his sister: "I find it stupid to speak in a booming voice and adopt a platform manner," and obvious as it may seem, now, one has marked the shift in feeling that did more than anything else to transform English poetry after 1908." Elizabeth Bishop on Jules Laforgue • The New Republic (1956)

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"His goal is to turn the poem into a song – a strophic song with a refrain." Carol Rumens on Thomas Campion • The Guardian

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"Ashbery has found a reliable way in old age of continuing to do, in attenuated form, what he does best: dramatize the way the mind moves among ideas without bothering with the ideas themselves." Stephen Ross • The Oxonian Review

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"Although I doubt that these aliens are forming literary communities of their own, as the Americans did in Paris in the 1920s, the cumulative effect is fascinating. One imagines all these outsiders with their strange stories in Ireland, a kind of fifth column, taking notes and waiting." Justin Quinn on immigrant poets in Ireland • The Irish Times

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"To be reminded that fine shoes and fancy hats are no insulation when seas are rough is always welcome." Carol Rumens • The Guardian

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"He composes the scene as if to show us that if poetry makes nothing happen, music does." Adrian Paterson on JM Synge and Harry White • Dublin Review of Books

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"Yet it is unclear why certain verses and details from the original French version—however implicit or repetitive they are—were left out, and if it was deliberately done so because of an aesthetic agenda." Fiona Sze-Lorrain on Emmanuel Moses • Words Without Borders

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"Money, murder and sex are the main scandals nowadays, and I cannot imagine either myself or any of my literary contemporaries being cross-examined by a famous lawyer-politician because we believed we had been insulted in the press." John Montague on Patrick Kavanagh • The Irish Times

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"Contemporary poetry is woefully limited by its over-reliance on the lyric form, but the lyric itself is today further reduced by the absence of the dramatic element." David Yezzi • New Criterion

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"We are beginning to realise that we face, at the very least, an uncertain future, one in which wisdom and experience – and respect – will need to be accorded a more important role." Carol Ann Duffy introduces poems by Roy Fisher, Nina Cassian and others • The Guardian

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"[O]n the one hand historical reports might say of events in the past, 'these things are over, they’re done'—but that on the other hand, poetry can say, let’s look at it again; and what if?" Luisa Igloria in conversation with Iris Law • Lantern Review

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"What Yeats desires is an 'unpopular theatre' of imagination and tradition, 'a mysterious art', 'free . . . from imitation, which shall be 'a memory and a prophecy.'" Michael Silk on WB Yeats • TLS

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"The elusiveness of Ashbery and the elusiveness of credit turn out to be the same special effect. Yowza." Joshua Clover on John Ashbery • The Nation

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"In the way Harwood pushes romanticism and realism against each other, she reminds me of the great Irish novelist, Elizabeth Bowen." Carol Rumens on Gwen Harwood • The Guardian

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"[Mahmoud] Darwish was no stranger to being arrested, in large part because of the very fact that he was a poet." George Fragopoulos • The Quarterly Conversation

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"Famously, Salinger was anything but a terrific friend to his many fans, and it is a compelling fact that the poet Raymond Ford is something of a blueprint for what Salinger himself would become." John Deming • Coldfront

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"And that is Strand’s characteristic jest, to start singing when about to be cut-off." Donald Brown on Mark Strand • Quarterly Conversation

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"Carson consent[s] to love's absolute dare and . . . displaces herself from the centre of the writing." James Pollock on Anne Carson • Contemporary Poetry Review

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"The day I visited Wheeler Hall, Gunn was lecturing on Fulke Greville." Joshua Weiner on Thom Gunn and Fulke Greville • Ploughshares

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"Our words seem to us to resonate in a present moment more present than those we normally live. Comparable with moments of making love, of facing imminent danger, of taking an irrevocable decision, of dancing a tango." John Berger on Mahmoud Darwish • Threepenny Review

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"Perhaps after years of testing the edges of his mind, stringing out his voice and stretching it to encompass others’, [Bin] Ramke now feels he can incorporate more of the character of other voices with fewer of their words." Craig Morgan Teicher • Boston Review

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"Work in the middle space by now should have added up to an important and fruitful development in contemporary poetry." Michael Theune on Kent Johnston • Pleiades (PDF)

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"[Heather McHugh's] poems about these subjects, and many others, offer a refreshing return to—and reinvention of—staple poetic devices like wit and metaphysical speculation." Stephen Ross • The Oxonian Review

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"''A most affecting scene of poverty and distress—For the service of the present year.'" Giles Goodland on the cross-readings of Caleb Whitefoord • Intercapillary Space

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"Awakened expectations can build the strongest of cages. [Mahmoud] Darwish baffled those expectations as often as he satisfied them." Eric Ormsby • Bookforum

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"Military references are everywhere, though at one point we seem to be at Wimbledon watching tennis." Daisy Fried on Ciaran Carson and others • Poetry

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"[H]e would rather have been returned to his own library than hope his works would feature in someone else’s, even two or three hundred years hence." Steve Donoghue on Ovid • Open Letters Monthly

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