SOURCE: "After Reading Hannah Arendt," in Poetry (Chicago), Vol. 100, No. 2, May, 1962, pp. 127-30.

In the following essay, Donoghue relates "the profound, humane reflections" in Arendt's works to contemporary poetry, noting that he "had the disturbing impression that she had far more to say—more of humane relevance—than any ten contemporary poets."

I first read Hannah Arendt in Partisan Review, a classic essay on Hitler's concentration camps. The essay was free from hysteria, violence, vituperation; there was only the violence within—Wallace Stevens's great phrase—animating the prose; no "rhetoric". I had not thought much about the camps; they were not part of my weather. I was eleven when the War started and no one took me aside to tell me about "original" guilt, categorical responsibility, and my share thereof. So after a few days or weeks the essay faded, I economized on emotional expenditure—Hiroshima Mon Amour...