"Perhaps I suffer from a chemical imbalance or a fatal flaw in sensibility, but I find all this good will in poetry positively hard going"

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-bitter-fool-7599

APRIL 2013

The bitter fool

by David Yezzi

Poetry has become sterile, but we can still find realism, humor, and intensity in the satiric impulse.

Poetry of this ilk has a sentimental, idealizing bent; it’s high-minded and “evolved.” Like all utopias, the world it presents exists nowhere. Some might argue that poetry should elevate, showing people at their best, each of us aspiring to forgive foibles with patience and understanding. But that kind of poetry amounts to little more than a fairy tale, a condescending sop to our own vanity.

Perhaps I suffer from a chemical imbalance or a fatal flaw in sensibility, but I find all this good will in poetry positively hard going.