SOURCE: "Big City, Long Poem," in Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Vol. 17, No. 2, 1993, pp. 219-34.

In the following excerpt, Downing complains that the individual sonnets in The Golden Gate lack intensity and that the story lacks depth.

Vikram Seth is mad about sonnets. The Golden Gate consists of a staggering five hundred and ninety of them strung together to form a verse novel. Even the bio page, acknowledgments, dedication, and table of contents are written in sonnet form. Seth's sonnets depart, however, from the traditional English line laid down by Wyatt and Surrey in that they rarely aspire to be, in Rossetti's phrase, a "moment's monument." Rather, they trace their ancestry back to Pushkin, placing high value on wit and effervescence. To achieve these effects, Seth favors quick, playful tetrameter over the more ponderous pentameter. Here Seth, anticipating the inevitable clamor of objections to his atavistic approach, cannily issues...