The Fascinated Beast - Critical Essay

Literary Review, Fall, 2000 by Thomas E. Kennedy

Still I crave the company of the poet. I am no literary purist. I still cheer Holden Caulfield's wish to call up the author for a chat.

Thus I seized the opportunity to edit this anthology as a special issue of The Literary Review for it gave me a formal excuse to pick some of my favorite poets and pose my question to them. The question is not so much what does this poem mean, or even only how does it mean, but rather how and why and in what context, on the background of what reflection and by which process did it come to take the form and content with which the process of its creation ended, the final product.

Questions impossible to answer in full. Yet here are thirty-one approaches to an answer, thirty-one responses, and while no poem can ever be fully explained, not even I suppose by its author, for every answer leads to more questions, still this assembly of responses gives sharp insights into the process in the variety of its practice. And in many cases, worksheets, earlier, marked-up drafts of the final poem are also included, providing concrete examples of the process in function.

I will not go on to try to draw conclusions or create yet another commentary upon the commentary. T Alan Broughton's brilliant and honest essay, "Answers to Unasked Questions," with which I have chosen to open the anthology, is a far better introduction to this book than I could hope to provide myself. So I will proceed straight to that.

But first a final word: I have also included photographs of the poets. When I issued my call for pictures, Albert Goldbarth sent one of himself with a further note which he asked me to include with his commentary: "The photo you requested is enclosed. Not that I blame you for wanting to spice up the issue with such stuffs, and not that I have a major self-image invested in always being Mr. Churlish, but--what has any of this to do with the proper power and beckon of someone's poem?"

A strong question and a good one. I do not know the answer. I only know that everything about poetry continues to hold me in its trance like a fascinated beast; even if wanting more than only the poem might seem beside the point of the poem itself, I will continue to want more. I will eat the poem and the commentary, too, gobble down the bio notes and proceed to the photos, peering intently at the reflected faces of the poets for whatever else I might find there.

I would like to extend my deep and sincere thanks to Walter Cummins and all the editors of The Literary Review, to Hysse Forchhammer for her art work, and to the thirty-one poets who so generously provided their excellent poems and essays for inclusion in this anthology. I hope that it will be of interest and use to teachers, readers, students, and other writers and poets--to anyone who loves this supreme use of language called poetry.

--Thomas E. Kennedy, Copenhagen, September 2000

Thomas E. Kennedy's books include five volumes of fiction (most recently Drive, Dive, Dance & Fight and The Book of Angels, both published in 1997), four of literary criticism and several anthologies. His stories, essays, poems, reviews, interviews, photographs, and translations appear regularly in European and American periodicals and have won O. Henry (1994), Pushcart (1990) and The European (1995) prizes. He serves as an Advisory Editor of The Literary Review and International Editor of Cimarron Review and Potpourri. A new story collection and a book of essays on the craft of fiction, Realism & Other Illusions, are forthcoming. Kennedy lives in Denmark.