"Between the discovery that there is a design which only his poetry
enables him to find as he confronts the world and the discovery that
such a design is a snare, merely a means of keeping him from further
discernment, Michael Rosen is wedged, is productively pinioned, [
should say, for it is just this pressure--of meaning discerned on one
hand and of meaning distrusted on the other--which makes the tension of
these poems, a new version of the old wars between mind and body, memory
and hope, self and surround. How tender and inclusive are Rosen's
preoccupations, and how disabused his conclusions! One reads these
playful, stricken poems with wonder--how will such ventures conclude, or
even persist? What will happen next? Here is a poet who persuades us, as
the saying goes, to stay tuned."--Richard Howard
Originally published in 1985.
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