Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Dybek, Stuart - David Clewell (review date Spring-Summer 1980)

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David Clewell (review date Spring-Summer 1980)

SOURCE: "Vital Assurances," in The Chowder Review, No. 14, Spring-Summer, 1980, pp. 64-7.

[In the following excerpt, Clewell favorably reviews Dybek's Brass Knuckles and calls Dybek a "multi-talented, generous imagination."]

There is a certain presence in the world of contemporary poetry that I like to think of as the "hermetic poem." This type of poem is almost always "well-crafted," riveted and tempered in all the right places so there can be no mistaking this object as poem. These poems would have us know that their makers are conscious, careful technicians well-versed in poesy. But the poem itself, for all practical purposes, is insulated and sealed; it is effectively impervious to any and all forces from the outside. Sometimes we are given certain clues to follow: the sky may be "cracked porcelain," a "someone" may be in a room "somewhere," as if a deliberate fuzzing of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Reg Saner (review date 1980)
   2. Robert Ward (review date 1980)
   3. Bruce Cook (review date 13 January 1980)
   4. Ivan Gold (review date 24 February 1980)
   5. David Clewell (review date Spring-Summer 1980)
   6. David Kubal (review date Autumn 1980)
   7. Joseph Coates (review date 8 April 1990)
   8. Michiko Kakutani (review date 20 April 1990)
   9. Katharine Weber (review date 20 May 1990)
   10. David Montrose (review date 26 July 1991)
   11. Thomas S. Gladsky (essay date Summer 1995)
   12. Stuart Dybek with Mike Nickel and Adrian Smith (interview date Winter 1997)
4. Copyright