THE WOUNDED SURGEON: Confession and Transformation in Six American Poets: Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, Delmore Schwartz, Sylvia Plath

The "great constellation" of writers Kirsch discusses have been praised as the first wave of "confessional" poets, but he finds this received opinion misguided. What makes these poets special, he argues, is not that they spilled their emotional guts on the page, but the ways in which they transformed these personal experiences into art: "their primary motive was aesthetic," he says. Kirsch, book critic for the New York Sun, emphasizes the "deliberate manipulation of tone and language" in poems that some readers have mistaken for straightforward autobiographical expressions, particularly in discussing Lowell (whom he considers the best American poet born in the last century). Such discussion sets the tone for the later chapters; the sameness of the thesis is mitigated by very close readings of each poet's verse in support of Kirsch's account of the poetry's development. Where Kirsch finds weaknesses, such as a decline in Schwartz's talents or Plath's bad taste in equating her father with the Nazis in "Daddy," he addresses them frankly. His confident and comprehensive assessments bear a great resemblance in method and tone to those of his former teacher, Helen Vendler, and will engage any reader looking for a fresh take on some of America's best-known poets. (Apr.)