“Budding, Bucolic, D.A. Powell” by Daniel E. Pritchard, at The Critical Flame
by Ernie on 11/07/09 at 4:54 pm
In the course of just three collections—Tea, Lunch, and Cocktails—D.A. Powell has proven himself to be one of the most exciting and enjoyable American poets writing today. His work is readily distinguishable on the page, before reading a single syllable, by its long lines, lack of capitalization, and idiosyncratic punctuation. These formal elements, while at once making him immanently recognizable out of the monotone of modern poetry, are also among the least engaging aspects of his poems. The emotional and intellectual strength of Powell’s work is founded, to a large extent, on his flourishing lyric control and on the brilliant collisions among his cabal of source material: Powell has drawn from the Gospel of Mark, the 1991 film Hook, Alexander Pushkin, Santa Claus, the Boy Scouts, and Lipps, Inc. It defies even the term “etcetera.” Read the full article here.
