Word: poetes
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From the start one expects something impressive: written by a Romanian-born poet, essayist and English professor whose last novel,The Blood Countess,was a national bestseller, Messiah promises to stun the reader. The dust jacket insists that "mordant social commentary and incandescent characters" lie within. A short plot summary instantly intrigues. And so one has every reason to expect a marvel between the covers of Messiah. Unfortunately, one has just as many reasons to be disappointed...
...Cambridge Center for Adult Education carries pretension to the Pudding with a reading by poet laureate Robert Pinsky. The Hasty Pudding Theatre, 12 Holyoke...
...poet Philip Larkin calls this atmosphere "the unreal life/Of exercises, marks, honor, speech days and games,/And the interesting and pretty animals that inspired it all." It's no wonder that a real animal can so unsettle us. The rare, wild beasts of the Yard remind us that there's world outside of Harvard. Beyond the classes and parties and grad-school acceptances, another life awaits. Like the skunk and hawk, we'll have to forage for our food instead of having it handed to us. But this world needn't frighten us so long as we acknowledge its existence...
...this and much more come from a 48-year-old innocent anarchist; his language has the touch of the poet and of the bomb thrower; he looks like actor James Woods in a bow tie. He thinks abstractly, making it equally fascinating and difficult to talk to him, since he turns nearly every contribution one makes to the conversation into a refinement of his theories...
...clear but uninspiring; perhaps beautiful but not in a way that fits. Allusive and chronically understated, her images betray a lingering strain of bitterness. True, Gluck does not embrace the world without mediation, but her style feels like an homage to an emptiness that doesn't befit a poet who believes "true happiness" can occur "within this deception...