8.01.2005

Donald Petersen, 1928-2005

[Posted 4:41 PM by James Panero]

Donald Petersen was the recipient of the first New Criterion Poetry Prize for his collection “Early & Late.” It is with sadness that we mark his passing. The Petersen family has issued a statement that includes this insight into his poetic temperament, worth repeating, I believe:

He was a life-long exponent of humanistic thinking and formalism in poetry; he shared the view of one of his teachers, John Crowe Ransom, “that a man ought to write better than he speaks.” And, he asserted the following: “In a time when partly-formed verse is being widely published and praised, the attempt to write a finished poem may not be fashionable, but it is still worth making. Poetry must present not merely what one has observed with interest or amusement, not merely a bright array of words, but the things that a man has loved and hated and feared in his lifetime.”