On Autumn Lake

March 14, 2022
Four decades of critical writing from poet Crase (The Revisionist) come together in this intensive collection. Crase is skeptical about calling the pieces criticism; rather, “they are appreciations or predilections, though to be truthful they were more like affairs of the heart, affairs of attention and intellectual desire, rather than criticism.” In “An Outsider’s Introduction to Emerson,” he writes that “there is no book, not even Leaves of Grass, that is closer to the source of poetry than Emerson’s Essays,” and in “Unlikely Angel,” he posits that “however much they crowed of their French influence,” the New York School poetry movement was “America waiting to happen.” Many of the pieces are personal: in “A Schuyler Ballad,” he recounts watching James Schuyler write a poem, and the title essay is an appreciation of his relationship with John Ashbery: “It was convenient for John Ashbery, and dumb luck for me, that I was living in Rochester and could pick him up at the airport whenever he arrived from New York to visit his mother.” Crase’s writing is colorful, though some of the people he writes about may be lost on readers not immersed in American postwar poetry. For student and scholars of the subject, though, this will be worth a look.

Starred review from March 15, 2022
Astute observations on literature and art. Poet, essayist, and biographer Crase, a MacArthur and Guggenheim fellow, has gathered more than 30 pieces published over the last 40 years that he describes as "affairs of attention and intellectual desire, rather than criticism." Among those who merit his attention are poets John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Marianne Moore, and Lorine Niedecker; artists Fairfield Porter, Grace Hartigan, Larry Rivers, Eugene Leake, and Robert Dash; and Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose prescience and "persistent moral proximity" Crase roundly celebrates in several essays. Besides being appreciations, the pieces also serve as memoir and cultural history. Crase knew many of the individuals he writes about and was immersed in the communities in which they flourished. Crase met Ashbery, for example, when he was 28 and had not yet read the poet's work. Needing someone to drive him around in upstate New York, Ashbery, then 45, enjoined Crase to serve as his chauffeur. "Our rides," Crase recalls, "were exhilarating, not only for the miles we covered but because his conversation, so habitually casual and good natured, was also fearless. Each ride was a rolling preceptorial." In some of the most affecting essays in the collection, Crase vibrantly delineates the friendships, affairs, collaborations, and financial infusions that made possible the New York School of poets and painters, centered on the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in Manhattan. The author offers a warm profile of British polymath Dwight Ripley, "linguist, poet, botanist, artist," who became the gallery's benevolent financial backer. An unusual involvement with an artist's work came when Mark Milroy proposed to paint his portrait, a suggestion that at first inspired fear. "Portraits are aesthetically intensified perceptions," Crase notes, "and intense perception makes people nervous." Of the experience itself, Crase found that "being the object of Milroy's perception, hours at a time, convinced me that the infamous 'male gaze' may be no fiction." Gracefully wrought essays imbued with a rare intimacy.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.