Slavitt's] sentences are so unburdened by the trivial or any kind of distraction, so transparent, that it would be too gross even to say that they are like angels in the sky. Because they don't just hang around in the sky like angels; they are the sky. They are not merely fluent, though fluency is hard to come by and something to be treasured; they flow as unhaltingly as a creek or waterfall. If I compare Slavitt's sentences to natural phenomena, it may be because he himself is rather a natural phenomenon: a man who writes easily, copiously, and beautifully. Kelly cherry, author of A Kind of...
Slavitt's] sentences are so unburdened by the trivial or any kind of distraction, so transparent, that it would be too gross even to say that they ar...
David R. Slavitt, award-winning author of more than 100 books of poetry and prose, translates the work of Charles Marie RenE Leconte de Lisle, a French poet associated with the Parnassian movement. -To look at Leconte de Lisle now, - writes Slavitt in the book's introduction, -is to discover a sensibility strikingly similar to that of Elizabeth Bishop (with Africa instead of Brazil as his mise en scEne). In some ways, he reminds me, too, of Wallace Stevens, stuck up in the fog of Hartford and longing for the glare of the tropics ('Home from Guatemala, back at the Waldorf'). He was an...
David R. Slavitt, award-winning author of more than 100 books of poetry and prose, translates the work of Charles Marie RenE Leconte de Lisle, a Fr...
