Contemporary Literary Criticism | Tate, James (Vol. 25) - The Virginia Quarterly Review

THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW

Tate's [Riven Doggeries] is disturbingly defensive. The central characteristic of these poems is their impenetrability, at best ordering experience through savage parodies, wordplay, and grotesque wit; at worst assaulting the reader and denying any kind of meaning, linguistic or existential. In this extreme form of expressionism, neither narrative nor visual logic is possible; incoherence and solipsism are the rule. Futility of action, failure of love, and lack of spiritual comfort form depressing themes, yet Tate never loses his self-effacing humor and even, in his more successful poems, an elegiac tone.

"Poetry: 'Riven Doggeries'," in The Virginia Quarterly Review (copyright, 1980, by The Virginia Quarterly Review, The University of Virginia), Vol. 56, No. 1 (Winter, 1980), p. 26.

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