SOURCE: “The Very Few Faces of God,” in American Poetry Review, Vol. 9, No. 2, March, 1987, p. 18.

In the following review, Carruth remarks favorably on the poetry collected in New and Selected Poems, 1970-1985.

“The soldier is convinced that a certain interval of time, capable of being indefinitely prolonged, will be allowed him before the bullet finds him, the thief before he is caught, men in general before they have to die. This is the amulet which preserves people—and sometimes peoples—not from danger but from the fear of danger, which in certain cases allows them to brave it without actually needing to be brave.” This wisdom from the world before apocalypse was written by Marcel Proust.

Poetry is “braving it.” It is one among the many ways. If it have peculiar virtue, this must be its music, by which one does not at all mean its mellifluous syllables...