The Simpson House: Sixty-One Years in Construction
Hudson Review, The › Vol. 57 Nbr. 2, July 2004
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Summary
Macuck features poet Louis Simpson as well as his several published books of collected poems, most of which are accorded commendation. He declares that Simpson's works bear many qualities such as the perfect pitch of his voice and his probing explorations. Furthermore, he emphasizes that the poet has the ability to look beyond the turmoil of a self and takes an interest in the world and people very different from himself.
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The Simpson House: Sixty-One Years in Construction
SINCE THE 1988 RELEASE OF HIS COLLECTED POEMS, Louis Simpson has published two more volumes, In the Room We Share (1990) and There You Are (1995). From these most recent books, his New Collected includes thirty poems.1 We also find forty-two uncollected "New Poems," plus selections from each of his previous nine volumes, those selections varying considerably from the 1988 Collected. He has excluded roughly eighty poems, some important works like "Lines Written Near San Francisco," "Unfinished Life," "Peter," "Maria Roberts," and "Encounter on the 7:07." Also missing are a few of my favorites from the two most recent books, but I'll mention only one, "Lifers," a beauty which reveals the continuing importance of Zen in his later work. Given that the New Collected rings with finality (the first epigraph is Laforgue: "Ah, my lovely soul, let us sum up"), it's a shame Simpson didn't provide us with a preface, some thoughts about his career or this n...
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