Pen wrote:
>The American poet most beneficently indebted to Rilke
>is the late Larry Levis; other Americans who have come
>under his sway have mostly taken a certain gushy
>abstraction from Rilke.
Interesting take on Larry (who was my teacher at Iowa in
the early 1970s), and I wouldn't disagree with either the Rilke
debt or its beneficence (no gushy abstractions for Larry!) with
respect to the later work, especially _Elegy_. Do you also think
Larry's poetry became more Rilkean toward the end--apart from
the obvious (the angels), I mean, or do you see it as such from
the outset? (And what do you think of Jorie Graham's angels, btw?
Rilkean? Otherwise?)
Thanks very much for making this unusual and (to me) insightful
connection between them in a post--
Candice
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