The Poetry of Life: And the Life of Poetry

Mason's collection of essays is a wide-ranging and overall pretty good collection of essays. The title essay is sort of a 'literary memoir', and while I expected it to be one of the better essays, it really isn't. But there are some excellent essays on Auden, Tennyson, Frost, Heaney, Louis Simpson, J.V. Cunningham, Anne Xexton, and Irish poetry. And then there are the essays meant to further the cause of the New Formalist movement. They almost sound like propoganda, but they are well written, enjoyable essays that make sense. And my favorite essay is "Other Lives: On Shorter Narrative Poems." Mason is a phenomenal narrative poet, and anyone with an interest in narrative poetry should read this essay.

This book is a collection of essays and reviews by poet David Mason, who thinks that contemporary poetry and its professional readers have neglected "nonacademic readers" like "the educated common reader." Through a critical style that incorporates the anecdote and that admires Louis Simpson's "refreshingly personal criticism," "as if we were hearing after-dinner opinions," Mason's text follows the goal of his Preface: "I have in mind that audience of grown-ups arguing about books even while they discuss . . . the latest political tremors or a new movie coming to town." Mason's taste for life in poetry criticism, whether communicated through autobiographical or biographical techniques, doesn't mean that he remains uncritical of self-absorbed forms of art. In the title essay, for instance, Mason acknowledges "the useful legacy of Eliot's ideas" in support of "the self so distanced from itself." Of the book's sixteen sections, five open with personal anecdotes. These anecdotes quickly become relevant to their subject matter (whether regionalism, self-indulgence, sentimentality, Tennyson, or Yeats). Given Mason's opposition to self-indulgence, one might argue that Mason develops contradictory attitudes toward forms of expression, or that he is critical of the personal in art, but then makes self-absorbed statements like, "Nowadays close reading often bores me," or, "I have sometimes felt that I was part of a story, and that I had a sacred duty to transcribe as much of it as I could." Yet such personal statements have relevancy to the larger poetics/rhetoric of the essays. Besides, wouldn't it seem odd--and bad writing at that--to claim that "poetry helps us live our lives" without then providing here and there a few examples from life when it has? Mason claims, "People do quote poetry, or refer to it--some do, anyway--and they connect it to their lives." He then supports this claim with the example of when his mother once remembered six potent lines by Yeats. Yet Mason's theory about why "people remember poems or songs or key phrases at surprising moments in life" is questionable. He says that "the best forms of expression are often those we most want to remember." But he suggests that these best forms of expression are those that are so large, so universal, so full of matter, that they "convey 'a general truth'." "Universality is suspect in some quarters, I suppose, but I submit," Mason says, "that we cannot have great art without it." When Mason then quotes from W.H. Auden's New Year Letter, he means to show how such poetry that conveys truth makes things happen because, as Auden once said, it survives--in the memory, among other places--as a way of happening, a mouth." Yet the section he quotes, like so many Auden lines, might seem to some less like a memorable poem and more like lineated philosophical text. What are the best forms of expression for poetry? This is an important question for Mason. On the one hand

Mason is a rarity in this day and age--a poet-critic who writes in a public idiom. He is clear in his aesthetic criteria, but not so dogmatic that his work lacks room for surprise (I was surprised to see him so enthusastic about John Haines, for instance). What is most important about his writing, though, is that it is elegant as well as insightful; these essays are as much a pleasure to read as the poets he discusses. My own efforts at poetry criticism lack the warmth and elegance that allow Mason to wear his erudition lightly. The elegance, direct tone, intelligence, and accessibility of these essays give me hope that poetry criticism outside the university is not in critical condition. Cheers to Story Line Press for supporting this important poet's work.

This is a brilliant book. His analysis of contemporary poetry is astute, learned and, above all, readable. I urge everyone who is interested in poetry to read this book. His explanations of the new formalism are as sound and enticing as any offered by other critics. For poetry lovers, this is a must have book.