Twenty Questions

by J.D. McClatchy

In Twenty Questions, one of America's finest poet-critics leads readers into the mysteries of how it draws on our lives, and how it leads us back into them. In a series of linked essays progressing from the autobiographical to the critical―and closing with a remarkable translation of Horace's Ars Poetica unavailable elsewhere―J. D. McClatchy's latest book offers an intimate and illuminating look into the poetic mind.

McClatchy begins with a portrait of his development as a poet and as a man, and provides vibrant details about some of those who helped shape his sensibility―from Anne Sexton in her final days, to Harold Bloom, his enigmatic teacher at Yale, to James Merrill, a wise and witty mentor. All of these glimpses into McClatchy's personal history enhance our understanding of a coming of age from ingenious reader to accomplished poet-critic.

Later sections range through poetry past and present―from Emily Dickinson to Seamus Heaney and W. S. Merwin―with incisive criticism generously interspersed with vivid anecdotes about McClatchy's encounters with other poets' lives and work. A critical unpacking of Alexander Pope's "Epistle to Miss Blount" is interwoven with compassionate psychological portrait of a brilliant poet plagued by both romantic longings and debilitating physical deformities. There are surprising takes on the literary imagination as a look at Elizabeth Bishop through her letters, and a tribute to the Broadway lyrics of Stephen Sondheim and the tradition of light verse.

The questions McClatchy poses of poems prompt a fresh look and the last word. Free of scholarly pretension, elegantly and movingly written, Twenty Questions is a bright, open window onto a public and private experience of poetry, to be appreciated by poets, readers, and critics alike.

Genres: Poetry, Criticism

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

McClatchy is an adjunct professor at Yale University and editor of the Yale Review. He also edits the "Voice of the Poet" series for Random House AudioBooks.

His book Hazmat (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) was nominated for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. He has written texts for musical settings, including eight opera libretti, for such composers as Elliot Goldenthal, Daron Hagen, Lowell Liebermann, Lorin Maazel, Tobias Picker, Ned Rorem, Bruce Saylor, and William Schuman. His honors include an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1991). He has also been one of the New York Public Literary Lions, and received the 2000 Connecticut Governor’s Arts Award.

In 1999, he was elected into the membership of The American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in January 2009 he was elected president. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (1987), the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets (1991). He served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1996 until 2003. (Wikipedia)

Reviews

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think it's interesting, and a testament to the author's reputation as an anthologist, that most of the stuff I found worthwhile in this book came from sources other than McClatchy himself. There's a chapter, "Commonplaces," in which McC lists excerpts from a journal he keeps, and many of these snippets -- a Turkish proverb, a quotation from Cocteau, a quatrain from an Auden poem -- resonated much more than any of McC's self-produced wisdom. McC has good taste, but it sometimes seems like that's it. And for a book of poetics that's supposed to appeal to the "Common Reader" (read: me), a lot of the chapters are pretty highfalutin and alienating. The Common Reader, I would think, has little interest the mordant observations James Merrill made when he and McC went to the opera together.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading McClatchy's Twenty Questions is a small education in modern and contemporary poetry, mixed with personal remembrances of the poets and his own poetic life. And its sending me out from reading to pick up Bishop, Lowell, Merrill, Dickinson, Auden, and Merwin - but not to sing Cole Porter tunes. It ends with a reflection on Degas and a translation of Horace's Ars Poetica. Good company.

[Gary McDowell]

Wiman recommends this book (because it has an autobiographical bend to its critical essays) in his book.