SOURCE: "Rhyme and Reason: Reading Poetry for Pleasure," in The Washington Post Book World, Vol. XVIII, No. 21, May 22, 1988, pp. 1, 14.

In the following excerpt from a review of five books of poetry, Disch offers praise for In Other Words, noting especially Swenson's flair for writing poetry that deals with minutiae.

We pick the poets we read (supposing we read poetry at all) as we pick our friends, for a disposition, sensibility and sense of humor that complement our own. This simple fact of readerly life is often a source of distress to particular poets and their partisans, who feel that esthetic merit should be commendation enough. They live in that fantasy world created at the universities, the Republic of Letters, where every two or three decades constitutes an Age with its own roster of canonical Authors. Almost all the teapot tempests of the world of poetry revolve about questions...