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I struggle to think of many worthwhile contemporary American poets. Charles Simic is dull, Christian Wiman arrogant, and Donald Hall as enjoyable as Monday morning drizzle.
Denis Johnson is best known for his fiction, particularly the story collection Jesus' Son. I think his poetic bent finds better expression in the fiction. As with Bukowski, Johnson’s poems are largely formless sprawl, spurning capital letters, lines that scan, images that blaze, or stanzas that demand to be memorised. The later poems ramble too much and leak religious imagery over everything like soap from a fractured dispenser. Disappointing.
Denis Johnson is best known for his fiction, particularly the story collection Jesus' Son. I think his poetic bent finds better expression in the fiction. As with Bukowski, Johnson’s poems are largely formless sprawl, spurning capital letters, lines that scan, images that blaze, or stanzas that demand to be memorised. The later poems ramble too much and leak religious imagery over everything like soap from a fractured dispenser. Disappointing.
