Poets on Painters: Essays on the Art of Painting by Twentieth-Century Poets

Library Journal

It has sometimes been claimed that only painters should criticize painters; only poets, poets; and so on, as only those familiar with a field are qualified to examine it or its members. These two collections show clearly the questionable validity of this claim. In both collections, prominent American and European authors turn their attentions to the world of painting, and the results are generally thought-provoking and incisive. Frank O'Hara's piece on Jackson Pollock (McClatchy) is one of the best: Ernest Hemingway's on Joan Miro (Halpern) is one of the worst. The writers selected for inclusion by McClatchy are all 20th-century poets; Halpern's are predominantly prose writers. The selections in both books have been carefully chosen, and it would be wise to purchase both, as together they provide an excellent introduction to ``crossover'' criticism in the realm of the arts.Terry Skeats, Bishop's Univ. Lib., Lennoxville, Quebec