George Klawitter. The Enigmatic Narrator: The Voicing of Same-Sex Love in the Poetry of John Donne. (Renaissance and Baroque Studies and Texts, 14.) New York: Peter Lang, 1994. xiii + 271 pp. $52.95.

1997 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 339-340
Author(s):  
Mario DiGangi
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmine Shamma

After suggesting (and agreeing) that Berrigan led the Second Generation New York School, this chapter treats the actual forms of Berrigan’s poems, focusing on his sonnets to show that these poets interpret poems as spaces in which to recreate rooms. Berrigan, perhaps more obviously than any other New York School poet, took deliberate steps towards integrating aspects of traditional poetic verse form: Where John Donne encouraged: “We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms,” Berrigan retorts (repeated throughout his Sonnets): “Is there room in the room that you room in?” riddling the form with domestic, urban and aesthetic complications. Berrigan explained to an interviewer: “I always thought of each one of my poems, like the sonnets, as being a room. And before that, I used to think of each stanza as being a room.” Accordingly, this chapter examines Berrigan’s stanzas as rooms, arguing that this responsive poetic form functions organically.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document