Twenty Questions

""All criticism,"" according to Oscar Wilde and McClatchy, ""is autobiography."" Embracing that dictum, this second essay collection (after the Melville Cane Award-winning White Paper) from the acclaimed poet, librettist and Yale Review editor mixes literary observations with observations of the literary life. Whether giving a refreshingly balanced review of Seamus Heaney (from the New Republic), a memoir of James Merrill (from the New Yorker) or a list of favorite sayings and quotations (representing everyone from Louis Armstrong to Andy Warhol), McClatchy is a witty critic and a willing teacher. In his title essay, for instance, he starts with the question, ""What exactly is `contemporary' poetry anyway?""--and goes on to explain precisely that, in terms that any high school student would understand and any academic or fellow poet would find provocative. Clearly, for McClatchy, life and poetry must be discussed in the same breath, with the same grace and good humor. One of the collection's most personal essays, a hilarious, bittersweet account of McClatchy's first love and deeply bungled ""coming out,"" ends with a translation of the Horace poems that brought these memories back. In another piece, McClatchy slides from a memoir of his mentor Anne Sexton into a triptych of dream-poems about Elizabeth Bishop. This book is belles lettres at their best. It will interest anyone who cares about the state of poetry today--and, what is rare for a collection of literary essays, it will likely widen McClatchy's audience. (Mar.) FYI: Twenty Questions is appearing simultaneously with a volume of poetry, Ten Commandants (see page 69), published by Knopf.