Overview

What our tendency to justify the mistakes in poems reveals about our faith in poetry-and about how we read Keats mixed up Cortez and Balboa. Heaney misremembered the name of one of Wordsworth's lakes. Poetry-even by the greats-is rife with mistakes. In The Poet's Mistake, critic and poet Erica McAlpine gathers together for the first time numerou

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9780691203478

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A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2021 Her book is more than a catalog of howlers; its aim is not to shame poets for their errors but to question critics' attempts to explain away those errors at all costs. . . . Maybe if gatekeeping were more rigorous, logrolling less obvious, we could make a stronger case for the greatness of poetry. But McAlpine suggests another tactic: not limiting the number of poems we define as valuable, but amending the way we talk about poems that we do value. ---Evan Kindley, New York Review of Books The Poet's Mistake is careful and painstaking. . . . McAlpine's cautious approach allows her to make as much of her material as possible, and increasingly lends authority. A reader attempting to catch her out will frequently find that she has already thought of a more convincing explanation. ---Graeme Richardson, Times Literary Supplement That her central argument - poets aren't infallible, sometimes mistakes are simply that - should be an outlier suggests that an unduly deferential approach to literary criticism has been allowed to proliferate among the towers of learning. . . . [This] book. . . has a useful role to play, albeit in the unlikely cause of bringing poets, or at least their most complaisant enablers, down a peg or two. ---Declan Ryan, Los Angeles Review of Books McAlpine displays a sensitive ear, a command of poetic history, and a critical intelligence that makes fine distinctions clear and meaningful. The Poet's Mistake is a model of good academic criticism. ---Anthony Domestico, Commonweal Magazine McAlpine's point is that accuracy is as important in poetry as in fiction, that intentionality, however difficult that might be to determine, is a factor one must consider, and that unconscious mistakes differ from naive errors. . . . This study is convincingly argued, delightfully written, fascinating in its examples, and well worth a careful read. * Choice Reviews *

McAlpine displays a sensitive ear, a command of poetic history, and a critical intelligence that makes fine distinctions clear and meaningful. The Poet's Mistake is a model of good academic criticism. ---Anthony Domestico, Commonweal Magazine That her central argument - poets aren't infallible, sometimes mistakes are simply that - should be an outlier suggests that an unduly deferential approach to literary criticism has been allowed to proliferate among the towers of learning. . . . [This] book. . . has a useful role to play, albeit in the unlikely cause of bringing poets, or at least their most complaisant enablers, down a peg or two. ---Declan Ryan, Los Angeles Review of Books Her book is more than a catalog of howlers; its aim is not to shame poets for their errors but to question critics' attempts to explain away those errors at all costs. . . . Maybe if gatekeeping were more rigorous, logrolling less obvious, we could make a stronger case for the greatness of poetry. But McAlpine suggests another tactic: not limiting the number of poems we define as valuable, but amending the way we talk about poems that we do value. ---Evan Kindley, New York Review of Books McAlpine's point is that accuracy is as important in poetry as in fiction, that intentionality, however difficult that might be to determine, is a factor one must consider, and that unconscious mistakes differ from naive errors. . . . This study is convincingly argued, delightfully written, fascinating in its examples, and well worth a careful read. * Choice Reviews * The Poet's Mistake is careful and painstaking. . . . McAlpine's cautious approach allows her to make as much of her material as possible, and increasingly lends authority. A reader attempting to catch her out will frequently find that she has already thought of a more convincing explanation. ---Graeme Richardson, Times Literary Supplement

McAlpine displays a sensitive ear, a command of poetic history, and a critical intelligence that makes fine distinctions clear and meaningful. The Poet's Mistake is a model of good academic criticism. ---Anthony Domestico, Commonweal Magazine

Author Information

Erica McAlpine is associate professor of English at the University of Oxford and a tutorial fellow at St Edmund Hall. She is the author of the poetry collection The Country Gambler.

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