Document Type
Book
Publication Date
1995
Abstract
The voice of the poet may be one or polyvocal: bardic, prophetic, political, satiric, meditative, bucolic, sentimental, nostalgic. The voice of the poet may be deep or shallow, profound or silly, complex or easy, loud or soft. Nothing guarantees that we will like the work of any given poet except our own direct engagement with the poems. If some of our friends tell us we will like, or dislike, Tess Gallagher’s poems, it is probably because of something they know about us or about the poems themselves, and that something is most likely the voice they hear, whether consciously or not, from us and from the poems. Surely, though, the best way to discover a poet is on our own. We run into his or her work somewhere, and something about that voice reaches us. Becoming readers of Tess Gallagher, on the one hand, or of David Wagoner, on the other, should tell us something of ourselves. I assume that you are already attracted to Gallagher’s poems, or else you would not be reading this. Reading what follows should tell you something about Tess Gallagher’s poems and stories, and maybe, in an odd way, something about yourself.
Recommended Citation
McFarland, Ron. Tess Gallagher. Boise, ID: Boise State University, 1995. Digital. Western Writers Series, 120.