Poetic Persuasion

Just finished reading Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist, which I highly recommend to all who write poetry. Tis a virtually plotless novel plumbing poetry's process (more alliteration for my own amusement this hibernatory morning), that reflects heavily on rhyme and meter. A lot of ramblings about iambic pentameter a la the mathematics of music. (I have to confess I skimmed these parts.) What makes this book sing is Baker's wonderful quirkiness. His off-the-wall metaphors and linguistic leaps. His wise and funny and poignant reflections on the inward-and-outwardness of writing; how very private it is, and how, urgently and of necessity to writer and reader, how public. How its failures can be its successes. How it hollows us out and brings us to our knees. What serious business it is, never to be taken too seriously. A calling where language rules, and not our egos.