Simpson, Louis (Vol. 7) - Simpson, Louis 1923–
Simpson, Louis 1923–
Simpson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, Jamaican-born American poet and novelist. His poetry is considered rich, brilliant, delicate, ironic—and genial, "unbuttoned." He has been called a poet of the emotive imagination. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 1-4, rev. ed.)
A Dream of Governors is in many ways a brilliant book. What one first notices about Simpson is his power over the single line—it is harmoniously filled-out in the manner of some such musical Elizabethan as Sir John Davies. (p. 298)
This power is symptomatic, however, of his chief temptation, which is toward decoration for its own sake—decoration which may finally take the strength of the poem away, as it does in the first poem, "The Green Shepherd." A converse danger, though it is less extreme, is toward the didactic, as in poems like "Tom Pringle." (And here I ought to mention a long poem, "The Runner," though it is neither decorative...
[The entire page is 4767 words long]
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