It’s difficult to respond to a letter that directly invokes a pointed criticism without exposing the subject of the criticism (in this case, Eleanor Wilner’s book) to yet more criticism. I’m sorry for that; it wasn’t my wish to give Wilner a hard time twice, and I regret not making that clearer in my reply to Andrew David King. As for the rest, I will say only that the context provided in my review was more than adequate, and the commentary on the poem in question was more than fair.
David Orr writes the column “On Poetry” for the New York Times Book Review. He is the author of You, Too, Could Write a Poem? (Penguin Books, 2017), The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong (Penguin Books, 2016), and Beautiful & Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry (HarperCollins, 2011). The recipient of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence…