The University Record, January 14, 1997
Michigan Quarterly Review features memoir of Robert Frost
A memoir of Robert Frost written by poet and University alumnus X.J. Kennedy, who met the celebrated poet in the early 1960s, is featured in the second part of The Poet’s Voice, Michigan Quarterly Review’s special double issue devoted entirely to the writings of poets.
Kennedy’s Robert Frost Overheard provides a glimpse of Frost’s genius as Kennedy writes about his encounter with the poet at a writers’ conference in Vermont and later at a poetry reading in Ann Arbor.
In addition to Kennedy’s piece, a poem titled The Mango of Poetry by U-M faculty member Lorna Goodison also is featured in the MQR special issue.
According to MQR editor Laurence Goldstein, Goodison’s poem “compares the conceiving of poetry to the sensual delight of biting into a ripe mango and letting the juice overflow `and fall freely upon me.’ The oral pleasure of such exquisite tasting reminds us of how the voicing of language has its origins in the cooing and suckling of infancy, and the chanting of blithe nonsense in the prelinguistic paradise that poetry constantly resurrects in our deepest memory.”
The Poet’s Voice, which includes the writings of more than 30 poets, is currently available in local bookstores and in the MQR office in Room 3032, Rackham Building. For more information, call 764-9265.
