THE WORLD OF JESSE STUART: Selected Poems

by Jesse Stuart ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1975

Yards and yards of dreadful poetry by the tireless sage of Kentuck', most of which is crimped into sonnet form. Any promising saplings in Stuart's long cultivation of rural landscapes and folkways have--in the poems at least--turned to a petrified forest of platitudes and banal derivatives: ""I love not springtime less but summer more."" And there are the inevitable seasonal catalogues: ""The smell of growing corn, the silken mats/ of sawbriar hair, wind combed; the damp earth floor/ of touseled weeds. . ."" etc., etc. In one crabby section Stuart supplies some suspender snappers in the form of this fundamental sociopolitical commentary: ""Swill soakers cannot live/ Without the Federal swill. . ."" and his obviously deeply felt outrage at Hiroshima is ploddingly prosy: ""We were and are afraid of Russia,/ And try to be their bosom friend!/ And still our friend has never dropped/ Atomic bombs on any city!"" Bad pomes for Stuart's large following who love not litachur less but Jesse more.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1975

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1975

Categories: NONFICTION