Where Have You Been? Selected Essays

The heft of these 30 substantial, methodical essays answers the title of this collection from critic, poet, and translator Hofmann (Behind the Lines). The subjects include fiction writing, poetry, and, briefly, painting and film. Hofmann is equally deft when lingering over a haiku by Seamus Heaney or expounding on the art of translation, which he compares to the “setting of a broken bone, a graft.” Hofmann’s touchstones are Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, and James Schuyler, so it’s fitting that he begins by examining the Lowell–Bishop correspondence and includes individual essays on each of these poets. His famous 2010 takedown of Stefan Zweig (he “just tastes fake”) clearly establishes Hofmann’s willingness to set himself against popular opinion. His admiring essays on Robert Walser, John Berryman, and Basil Bunting, on the other hand, might well send readers running back to the original texts. Despite Hofmann’s versatility, he is in many respects a poets’ poet, delighting in obscure vocabulary and lengthy poems, and expressing a deeply personal connection to the writing he admires. Based on this collection, Hofmann deserves to be considered one of today’s premier critics. ([em]Dec.) [/em]