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By Reza Aslan, Stephen Burt, Amanda Fortini, Nathan Heller, Melinda Henneberger, Troy Patterson, David Plotz, Jack Shafer, John Swansburg, Justin Taylor, and June Thomas
Posted Friday, May 2, 2008, at 7:07 AM ET

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The Modern Element: Essays on Contemporary Poetry

The Modern Element: Essays on Contemporary Poetry, by Adam Kirsch. What makes a poem modern, and what makes a modern poem a work of art? These are the questions that animate The Modern Element, a critical survey of contemporary poets—from John Ashbery to Jorie Graham, Philip Larkin to Richard Wilbur—by Adam Kirsch. With this volume, Kirsch, whose smart, muscular, and at times acerbic criticism has been dazzling and infuriating readers for a decade, steps into a distinguished line of literary essayists. He derives his title from a Lionel Trilling essay; he writes in the accessible, generalist vein of Edmund Wilson; and he builds his own definition of modern poetry on the one advanced by T.S. Eliot in "The Metaphysical Poets." Eliot defined the modern poet, Kirsch writes, "not as his age's interpreter but as its exemplary specimen or willing victim." For Kirsch, "a good modern poem," which is to say a meaningful or significant poem, can be written only by "poets who put themselves generally at risk in their work"—technically, emotionally, intellectually—and who avoid the "fraudulent self-exposure" and "otiose experimentalism" too many writers fall back on.

Kirsch employs these criteria—sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly—in evaluating the poets in this collection. His approach seems especially relevant now, when so much poetry reads (and is read) as journaling or therapy. Poets who, in Kirsch's estimation, merely transcribe raw perceptions get the gloves-off treatment: "[Sharon] Olds has no interest in abstracting from the contingent details of her life to a larger, more universally valid idea or symbol." Kirsch values discipline and rigorous craft; he abhors "mental laziness." Yet he also objects to the deliberate obscurity that has become so fashionable in poetry. (Kenneth Koch is "close to [John] Ashbery in his ability to sound like sense without always making it.") But even at his most astringent, Kirsch, a poet himself, exhibits an understanding of the emotional demands of writing: "It means hollowing out one's self, in order to allow all the bitterness and joy of life to take up residence there and find expression." —Amanda Fortini

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Reza Aslan is the author of No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam. Stephen Burt's books of poems are Popular Music, Parallel Play, and Shot Clocks: Poems for the WNBA. Amanda Fortini is a Slate contributor. Nathan Heller is a Slate copy editor. Melinda Henneberger is a Slate contributor and the author of If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians To Hear. Troy Patterson is Slate's television critic. David Plotz is Slate's deputy editor. He is the author of The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank. You can e-mail him at . Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large. John Swansburg is a Slate associate editor. Justin Taylor is the editor of The Apocalypse Reader and Come Back, Donald Barthelme. June Thomas is Slate's foreign editor. You can e-mail her at .
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