Letter from Poetry Magazine



	
Letter to the Editor



	

			
Letter to the Editor
		




	

		
	
					by  Igor  Webb 			





	
	

				
Dear Editor,


Michael Robbins’s review of Robert Hass’s New and Selected Poems reminded me of Stanley Kunitz’s introduction to Hass’s Field Guide. Kunitz admires “the scrupulous purity of [Hass’s] observation” and quotes a few lines from “one of the most buoyant and delightful of [Hass’s] lyrics,” “Song,” to prove his point. Robbins quotes the same lines and says of them: “This isn’t poetry, it’s a list of stuff in Hass’s kitchen.” Well, to choose between Kunitz’s reading and Robbins’s is, to use some of that language Robbins likes, a no-brainer.
		
sea cliff, new york
	


	

		Originally Published: November 1, 2010	


	
		
		

	
		

			
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This prose originally appeared in the November 2010 issue of Poetry magazine


		
			

				
						November 2010
				
			

			
		

			
		


		

			
		


	








	
		
	
	





	



	
		

	
		

		
		


		
				
		
	


			
Originally appeared in Poetry magazine.

		
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