by Kirby Congdon…….

This past Sunday, August 13th (2017) Eric Bennett, in the New York Times Book Review, considers The World Broke in Two. Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster, and the Year That Changed Literature by Bill Goldstein. The breakage suggested in the title refers to the end of rewriting the work of historic writers, translating it into contemporary language, and reconciling their own personal crises with their own creative lives. Mr. Bennett’s remarks end with this strange conclusion: The homage Goldstein pays them may be shallow but it is entirely full of life. There is also an earlier remark in reference to Lawrence and Woolf. They shared, as Eliot did, the frustrating conundrum that Forster had described but had too long been unable to escape: always working, never creating.

These are provocative statements but not ones I can attempt explicate. It makes me wonder is a good book meant to be entertaining or is it a serious study?Perhaps this is why most people avoid poetry.