Athletes
Description:... The poems in Kirby Congdon's collection showcase the sinuous, lyrical intensity he is known for. Each of the poems is about a different type of athlete, such as Swimmers, Joggers, Acrobats, Daredevil and Discus Thrower. Although he attended Columbia University with Ginsberg and Kerouac, and has contributed a major study of Corso, Congdon is wrongly considered a Beat poet. His work is contemporaneous with the Beats, but hearkens back to modem masters such as Stevens, with a Baudelairian strain, mixed together with colloquial speech. Though the focus of the collection is on the correlation between the physical and the ethereal, the pleasure of these poems emanates primarily from their impressive musicality. Congdon uses lyric techniques such as assonance without strain or stretch. At the age of eighty-six, Congdon is a national treasure. He is the American answer to William Butler Yeats, as great a musician as a poet can be without going over the top.
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