Literary reviews by Tim Love.
Warning: Rather than reviews, these are often notes in preparation for reviews that were never finished, or pleas for help with understanding pieces. See Litref Reviews - a rationale for details.

Sunday, 1 March 2026

"Dwelling places" by David Ferry (Univ of Chigaco Press, 1993)

Poems from Agni, Harvard Magazine, The New Republic, Partisan Review, Ploughshares, Raritan, etc. Many of the pieces are translations/adaptions - of Goethe, Rilke, Baudelaire, etc. My favourite poem was Mnemosyne (Hölderlin) though most of the pieces were way beyond me. In general, I don't understand why there are so many words. Here for example is part of "In the garden" - The whole plucked stalk is an event in time:/ a number of blossoms one above the other,/ but some blossoms more fully out than others,/ in an intricately regular scale or series./ Of course, since the flower is plucked, it isn't really/ an event in time, but only the record of an event.

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