Written in Water, Written in Stone: Twenty Years of Poets on Poetry

Donald Hall began publishing the Poets on Poetry series in 1976 with the modest hope that it ""might be useful to young poets trying out their ideas. Most likely to sharpen their claws on."" Most of the essays selected for the series were written in the ""cowboy"" period of the late '70s and early '80s, when well-funded poets fancied themselves ""wild animals"" while others, such as Robert Bly, could get away with criticizing the government for giving them money because it results in ""the domestication of the poet."" The idea of the poet, young or old, as a wild animal is unfortunately as comically out of date as the idea that the government might offer a poet enough money to obtain shelter. Young poets may in fact derive little wisdom from such a pampered poetic community. A few admirable moments offer some relief, however. Interviews with Robert Creeley and James Wright stand out like the tapping of a glass at a dull dinner, and two lyrical essays about the process of writing by Jane Miller and Maxine Kumin are fine, languid antidotes to the fussy efforts of their male counterparts. Amy Clampitt, Marge Piercy, Charles Simic, Anne Sexton and Thom Gunn also make strong, pointed contributions, but they might not be worth having to claw your way through such a mediocre collection. (Jan.)