Oblivion: On Writers & Writing

by Donald Justice

In OBLIVION, Donald Justice focuses his critical attention on 20th century literary matters. Engaging the battles of present trends and obsessions, he subtly explores the nature of obscurity, sincerity, style, memory, meter, free-verse, and music. OBLIVION closes with generous excerpts from Justice's own notebooks, providing a rare glimpse into the creative process of a writer whom many critics consider a central conscience of the late 20th century.

Genres: Poetry, Writing, Essays

152 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1998

About the author

Donald Justice was an American poet and teacher of writing. He graduated from the University of Miami and went on to teach for many years at Iowa Writers' Workshop, the nation's first graduate program in creative writing. Some of his students there included Mark Strand, Charles Wright, Will Schmitz and Jorie Graham. He also taught at Syracuse University, the University of California at Irvine, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Florida in Gainesville.

Justice published thirteen collections of his poetry. The first collection, The Summer Anniversaries, was the winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize given by the Academy of American Poets in 1961; Selected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1980. He was awarded the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1991, and the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1996.

His honors also included grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1997 to 2003. His Collected Poems was nominated for the National Book Award in 2004. Justice was also a National Book Award Finalist in 1961, 1974, and 1995.

Of Justice as teacher, his student and later colleague Marvin Bell said in a eulogy, “As a teacher, Don chose always to be on the side of the poem, defending it from half-baked attacks by students anxious to defend their own turf. While he had firm preferences in private, as a teacher Don defended all turfs. He had little use for poetic theory.”

Of Justice's accomplishments as a poet, his former student, the poet and critic Tad Richards, noted that, "Donald Justice is likely to be remembered as a poet who gave his age a quiet but compelling insight into loss and distance, and who set a standard for craftsmanship, attention to detail, and subtleties of rhythm."

Justice's work was the subject of the 1998 volume Certain Solitudes: On The Poetry of Donald Justice, which is a collection of essays edited by Dana Gioia and William Logan.

Reviews

[T Fool · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essays that get 'into the weeds' . . . but avoid being 'academic'.
How can this be?
Well, he was a practitioner, and someone who looked closely at things that mattered.

I mean . . . inspecting Wallace Stevens's line accents over time. Wow. You'd think what the fuh? But such microscopy makes you (the reader who's the poet who's the only reader who would care at all or even notice) really hold onto one facet of poetic depth.

The title essay takes on a subject dear to us (readers who are poets who are the only readers who would care at all or even notice): neglect, obscurity, rejection, back-of-the-hand, 'who-dat?'
Three poets Justice either edited or knew, each with declining public notice, if any at all.

Sisters. Brothers. Keep the faith.

[Terry Ofner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked the attention to music in poetry. Title section on good poets who didn't make it in the "biz" was not that good.