Reginald Shepherd (1963–2008)

This anthology accomplishes what it purports to, which is to explore the lyrical tradition within the context of postmodern poetry. Reginald Shepard's choice of poets is a representative one. For many of these poets, the work included here may not be their most radical or innovative to date, but the selections from each do fit under the rubric of lyrical postmodernism. For a reader already conversant with the poetry of the contemporary "avant garde," most of the 23 poets included here will be familiar ones: Bin Ramke, Gillian Conoley, Martha Ronk, C. S. Giscombe, Carol Snow, Rosemary Waldrop, Mei Mei Berssenbrugge to name a few. For readers who are just beginning to explore such poetry this anthology offers a guided entry, as each poet's work is preceded by a short artist's statement. In fact, the artist's statements, to my mind, are the main attraction of this collection. They are varied, informative, and provocative and may well help a reader or writer, whether or not already a fellow-traveler, to rethink or hone his or her own poetics or aesthetics.… (mer)

I feel like this is, in some ways, a book unsure of its audience, which is not unexpected in an anthology that collects essays originally published in a variety of places. The first section is an autobiographical essay that was both a fascinating life story and beautiful writing. The second section was poetics and esthetics that struck me as alternately inacessible, trite, naive and insightful - occasionally all three at once. I get the impression they were very much the product of a school of thought, but not the sort of thing that was particularly useful to people outside that school: several times I found myself making notes of books he should read that covered all this same material decades ago (but aren't generally read by English professors.) The third section is critical essays of individual poets and authors, which were a vaguely interesting read, but as I'd never heard of most of the works being discussed, despite having gone through several periods of devouring modern poetry, I got little more out of it than a reading list. The final section finished the books with some general essays on what and why poetry.

I greatly enjoyed the first and last sections of the book, as a reminder (for someone who occasionally forgets about poetry) of why I need and, and as just plain good prose writing. But the middle two sections left me wishing I was still at college taking poetry workshops, still part of the conversation he was having which largely left me out.… (mer)