Willard Spiegelman

"Reading -- I am tempted to call it 'the best reading' -- is endangered now not only because our culture has become visual and obsessed with images, but also, and more dangerously, because the culture has become a mass one. The most popular activities are performed in groups -- music, sports, spectacular public entertainment, whereas the best readers are idiosyncratic solitaries. We have to much noise, especially when we least desire it. At the theater, at a concert, or at the movies, people show more behave as though they are still in their living rooms, sharing opinions that no one else wants to hear, whether loudly or quietly doesn't matter. To sit still in one place, especially in the presence of others, is a dying or at least an endangered custom. So where does this leave poor reading? Sitting alone, in quiet, in one's room: how many have the capacity to do that? Maybe very few ever have; perhaps 'the best reading' has always been the professor's chimerical dream" (53). show less

As much as I love the romantic poets, this was pretty slow sledding. Dr. Spiegelman covers a lot of territory and you'll learn a lot about the poets' lives and works. But somehow it lacks the engagement factor I would have expected it to have. My college professor (Dr. Nance, wherever you are) did a much better job.

34. (from 2010) Southwest Review : Volume 84, Number 4 1999 by Southern Methodist University (1999, 161 pages, read Oct 30 - Nov 30)

Part of my poetry/literary journal experiment. The Southwest Review is published out of Southern Methodist University. This was one of several issues I did not get rid of last year, and first one I’ve read, and which I picked more-or-less at random. A bit of an academic feel. The poetry seemed excellent (with the universal qualifier for me—but, what do I show more know), but there weren’t that many poems. The essays were sometimes terribly difficult to read, and some took me a few tries to get started, but they were rewarding. The short stories didn’t stick.

Notes for me - the main things I remember (since I read this so long ago):
-Rick Bass’s essay about his hunting deer in Texas with his family. He has a book of essays on the same theme which I read in 2006 (in a different reading life) and adored, called [521713::The Deer Pasture].

-Thomas Pfau’s fascinating and difficult essay on Wallace Stevens…which goes into Keats, and Shelley and Emerson.

Albert Goldbarth’s poem, which I posted part of back in my 2010 thread in post #189, here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/90167#1221386

2010
http://www.librarything.com/topic/104839#2436669 show less

Well done and informative for those with some knowledge of the Romantic poets. For those without the benefit of being familiar, pre-read the discussed poems. The explanations are detailed and well done. A nice refresher for those who enjoy the period's poetry.