"There is little glory for Irish-language writers. Yet we have a young poet like Séamas Barra Ó Súilleabháin, who will read poems from his début collection Beatha Dhónaill Dhuibh at this year’s IMRAM, fusing them with sonic effects from Czech sound sculptor Slavek Kwi. He is compelled to write in Irish because his voice and his thoughts are in Irish, not English." Liam Carson Irish Times

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"Only when I counted did I realise that the book has nearly as many women as men speaking memorably and musically of the great human subjects: love, loss, wonder." William Sieghart • Guardian

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"I’m not sure how many people in the academy had much idea of how very good the poetry was, and is. [Jay Macpherson] was the person that major American poets used to ask me about when I ran into them, people like the late Anthony Hecht or Mark Strand, Pulitzer-Prize winners both. A recent British editor called her one of the great poets of the twentieth century, and compared her with Stevie Smith, but her emotional range is far wider than Smith’s." Eleanor Cook • Brick Books

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"But there are bad biographies that tell you nothing about their subject’s breakfast preferences, and The Whole Harmonium is one such. Stevens is one of those apparently fortunate, self-standing poets who are not greatly involved with the styles or personalities of their time, whose work sets no puzzles and makes a sufficiently vivid impression all by itself." Michael Hofmann • LRB

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"It can seem, to those of us who teach poetry writing, that the only way to sell young poets on metrical effects is by contagion." Anthony Madrid • The Paris Review

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"As a poet—he has written three books of poems, as well as two novels—Lerner is sensitive to the odd psychological transactions that tend to take place between poets and non-poets. The latter often regard the former with a blend of contempt and envy. The contempt is easy enough to understand—poetry is unprestigious, unremunerative, a form of play rather than grown-up work. But it is the envy that Lerner focuses on, the way people who don’t write poetry nevertheless feel the urge to stake a claim to it." Adam Kirsch • The Atlantic

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"Like scientists and mathematicians, professional poets are entirely trained and largely employed within the university system, producing work primarily for each other while a very small contingent of outside enthusiasts looks on." Frank Guan • The Point

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"In every generation there is a handful of poets who challenge the way we think about language and how it is used." John Yau • The Hyperallergic

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"After a death, those remaining form a new order, their relation to each other forever changed. Indeed, it is by sensing that alteration that we realize greatness has passed—like the perturbations in the orbit of Uranus that marked the presence of an unknown planet." William Logan • The New Criterion

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The Page is taking a break. JMcA, Sept 5, 16

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